Progress from the Traditional Vaccines to Novel Rational Vaccine Designs

Abstract

Vaccines are among the most valuable assets for saving human and animal lives. The vaccines discovered and designed on the Pasteurian principles laid the foundations of the traditional vaccine regime during the late-19^th century. Some traditional vaccine designs proved remarkably successful, while others had safety or efficacy problems, and still others failed- particularly those against diseases caused by non-cultivable, hyper-variable or opportunist pathogens, or those requiring cellular immunity. The problems of the traditional vaccines are mainly attributed to empiricism in their design and evaluation. Rationalization is a knowledge-based solution to problems of the traditionally designed vaccines. In the 20^th century, the rationalization of the traditional vaccines progressed along two main paths, firstly the ‘reductionist’ path from the whole organisms to the isolated antigens/subunits to the peptide vaccines, and secondly the ‘attenuation-refining’ path from the serial-passage attenuated to the defined and conditional mutants to the live expression vectored and chimeric vaccines. Innovative rDNA-based and other technologies, in synergy with novel insights into key concepts in immunology of antigens and epitopes, mechanistic determinants of immune responses, and markers of protection have impacted progressive rationalization of the traditional vaccine designs. A completely rational vaccine is designed with all the features to assure maximal efficacy and predictability of the immune markers-informed outcome in responders and non-responders. In the 21^st century, two new approaches viz., the ‘reverse vaccinology’ and the ‘systems vaccinology’ are leading to the emerging regime of completely rational vaccines, including individualized ‘designer’ vaccines for infectious and non-infectious diseases of humans and animals.

Keywords: Traditional vaccine design, reverse vaccinology, systems vaccinology, rational vaccine design

Cite this Article

Singh Ajit. Progress from the Traditional Vaccines to Novel Rational Vaccine Designs. Research & Reviews: Journal of Immunology. 2016; 6(3):   17–31p.