Bacterial genomes and vaccine design

Abstract

Since its introduction, vaccinology has been very effective in controlling and eliminating life-threatening infectious diseases. However, in several cases, the conventional approach to identifying protective antigens, based on biochemical, immunological, and microbiological methods, has failed to deliver successful vaccine candidates against major human pathogens. The availability of complete bacterial genome sequences has allowed scientists to change the paradigm and approach vaccine development starting from genomic information, a process named reverse vaccinology. This can be considered as one of the most powerful examples of how genomic information can be used to develop vaccines that were difficult or impossible to tackle with conventional approaches. The ever-growing genomic data, the new genome-based approaches and high-throughput sequencing technologies will help to complement reverse vaccinology to enable timely development of new vaccine antigens against emerging infectious diseases.