Current Development Strategies for Vaccines and the Role of Reverse Vaccinology

The concept of vaccination has been around for centuries. Vaccines constitutes cost - effective measures for preventing disease. Advances in biotechnology and an understanding of the inductive and effector components of immune responses have ushered in a 'golden age' of vaccine development and implementation. Many licensed vaccines have one or more ideal characteristics, but none manifests them all. Of the generic vaccine technologies and vaccination strategies in different stages of development, some have already demonstrated their flexibility, practicality, robustness and potential simplicity of production and others hold promise for the futur e. Although conventional methods of development of vaccines are successful in many cases, this approach took a long time to provide vaccines against those pathogens for which the solution was easy and failed to provide a solution or those bacteria and par asites that did not have obvious immunodominant protective antigens. The reverse approach to vaccine development takes advantage of the genome sequence of the pathogen. This approach allows not only the identification of all the antigens seen by the conven tional methods, but also the discovery of novel antigens that work on a totally different paradigm. With the genome sequences of many bacteria, parasites and viruses to be completed in the near future, many vaccines impossible to develop will become realit y, and novel vaccines, using non - conventional antigens (i.e. non - structural proteins) can be developed.