Overview of Vaccine Strategies
Ruth Arnon
from: Vaccine Design: Innovative Approaches and Novel Strategies (Edited by: Rino Rappuoli and Fabio Bagnoli). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2011)
Abstract
This chapter describes the different strategies applied for vaccination against microbial diseases. These include vaccines against bacterial, viral and parasitic infections which led to tremendous improvement in public health. The use of both live attenuated or killed whole organisms and their sub-units is discussed, as well as more novel approaches, such as DNA vaccines, recombinant vaccines and epitope-based, or peptide vaccines. The advantages and disadvantages of each approach are presented, eluding to various considerations, such as efficacy, safety and cost of production. The application of passive vaccination, including the use of pooled IgG (IVIG) is also described in brief. As indicated, these combined strategies led to a long list of vaccines that are presently approved and licensed in the USA, Europe and many other countries, as summarized in a detailed table, which refers also to the pediatric combination vaccines DPT and MMR that are used worldwide, and led to drastic reduction of the incidence of infectious diseases read more ...
