Perspectives on novel vaccine development

Abstract

Vaccination is a common routine for prevention and control of human and animal diseases by inducing antibody responses and cell-mediated immunity in the body. Through vaccinations, smallpox and some other diseases have been eradicated in the past few years. The use of a pathogen itself or a subunit domain of a protein antigen as immunogens lays the basis for traditional vaccine development. But there are more and more newly emerged pathogens which have experienced antigenic drift or shift under antibody selective pressures, rendering vaccine-induced immunity ineffective. In addition, vaccine development has been hampered due to problems including difficulties in isolation and culture of certain pathogens and the antibody-dependent enhancement of viral infection (ADE). How to induce strong antibody responses, especially neutralizing antibody responses, and robust cell-mediated immune responses is tricky. Here we review the progress in vaccine development from traditional vaccine design to reverse vaccinology and structural vaccinology and present with some helpful perspectives on developing novel vaccines.