Defense Against Biological Terrorism: Vaccines and Their Characterizations

Abstract

This chapter presents an introduction to infective diseases and potential biological agents that could potentially be used for bioterrorism. Technical brief description of the possible treatments and preventions of these biothreats is presented with emphasis placed on the principles of immunological defenses, vaccination, and preparation of vaccines. In principle, various types of vaccines that are commercially used as “antibacterial or anticancer vaccines” can be produced using various types of antigenic carbohydrate haptens containing relevant epitopes. This review highlights the strategies used for the characterization of such synthetic neoglycoconjugate vaccines used as a means of protection against biothreats. A complete mass spectrometry-based strategy for validating the preparations of the neoglycoconjugate vaccine is presented.