Human vaccines.
With very few exceptions the vaccines available for general medical use are to control relatively acute viral or bacterial infections. The vaccines are either live attenuated, inactivated whole organisms or subunit preparations. Developing live attenuated viral vaccines has been and continues to be a popular approach, because generally, they give long-lasting immunity after one or two administrations. Until recently this has been a less successful approach for bacterial vaccines, but the prospects are now brighter. Subunit preparations (oligosaccharides) of encapsulated bacteria as hapten:carrier conjugates also show considerable promise. The demonstration that a viral antigen, the surface antigen of hepatitis B virus, could be produced by genetic-engineering, opened the way to the development of chimeric live vectors.
Division of Cell Biology, John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, Canberra.
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D000328:Adult; D001428:Bacterial Vaccines; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016233:Immunotherapy, Active; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D017211:Treatment Failure; D014481:United States; D014612:Vaccines / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000145:classification; D014613:Vaccines, Attenuated; D015164:Vaccines, Inactivated; D014614:Vaccines, Synthetic; D014765:Viral Vaccines; D014774:Virulence
D001428:Bacterial Vaccines; D014612:Vaccines; D014613:Vaccines, Attenuated; D015164:Vaccines, Inactivated; D014614:Vaccines, Synthetic; D014765:Viral Vaccines