Profiling Vaccines for an Immunosenescent and Multimorbid Population

Abstract

Vaccines have contributed substantially to the gain in life expectancy achieved in the last few centuries. Nowadays, new target groups for vaccination are garnering increasing attention, such as the elderly and pregnant women, as they have the potential to yield substantial health benefits from vaccination. In the last few decades, new advanced technologies have made it possible to produce vaccines that were previously unthinkable. For example, genome sequencing has made it possible to discover novel vaccine antigens derived directly from genomic information. Recombinant DNA, glycoconjugation and reverse vaccinology are part of an explosion of new technologies in immunology and synthetic biology, opening broad new horizons in vaccine technology. In the future, we may achieve the production of fully synthetic vaccines. Systems biology is helping to enhance our understanding of the immune system, and how these new vaccines may elicit protection, while in the approach termed “systems vaccinology,” high-dimensionality studies of cellular and molecular responses to vaccines have been proposed to help formulate hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of immunosenescence and to identify potential biomarkers worthy of investigation. Recent advances in adjuvant technology are a further major component of vaccine development. All these new technologies and approaches have enabled significant progress in our knowledge of immune response and how it can be stimulated. The future may bring vaccines for illnesses previously considered impossible to prevent and in populations with immunosenescence.