Vaccine Design in the 21st Century

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Introduction

Vaccines are well-established medical interventions capable of preventing infectious disease. There are many notable vaccine success stories, starting more than 200 years ago with the earliest work by Jenner that led to a cowpox-based immunization to prevent smallpox disease. Subsequent work by Pasteur during the 19th century refined and consolidated the basis of vaccinology through the principles of isolation, inactivation, and administration of key components from disease-causing pathogens. Relatively soon, this basis had enabled the development of several “first generation” vaccines that afforded protection against rabies, typhoid, cholera, and plague (within the 19th century), followed by tuberculosis, yellow fever, and pertussis by the first half of the 20th century. Breakthroughs in mammalian cell culture technology in the second half of the 20th century led to the development of “second generation” vaccines, protecting against polio, measles, rubella mumps, and varicella (as reviewed previously ). In the late 20th century the first polysaccharide and glycoconjugate vaccines were developed, some of which have been refined and are implemented on a global scale.

Despite estimates that vaccines have saved several hundred million cases of disease and more than 100 million deaths, there are still numerous pathogens causing globally significant morbidity and mortality, for which effective vaccines are not yet available. Here, we describe the existing and emerging technologies and strategies that we believe will be crucial for design of next generation vaccines to address unmet medical needs relevant across the world in the 21st century.

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Strategies for modern vaccine design