Therapeutic vaccines: realities of today and hopes for the future.
Vaccines are by definition prophylactic, but in recent years an interest has developed in therapeutic vaccines for infectious diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis, as well as gastric ulcers, cancer (with different approaches to combat various types of malignancy) and autoimmune diseases (a definite success was the development of a vaccine against multiple sclerosis) and there are potential vaccines in development for myasthenia gravis, lupus and diabetes. Therapeutic vaccines are also being developed against cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, prion diseases and Huntington's disease. All of these efforts are based on the therapeutic vaccine being closely related chemically to the etiological agent that causes the disease.
Sela
Michael
M
Department of Immunology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel. michael.sela@weizmann.ac.il
Arnon
Ruth
R
Schechter
Bilha
B
D016915:AIDS Vaccines; D001327:Autoimmune Diseases / Q000628:therapy; D001500:BCG Vaccine; D015195:Drug Design; D017325:Hepatitis B Vaccines; D006801:Humans; D019636:Neurodegenerative Diseases / Q000628:therapy; D017096:Prion Diseases / Q000628:therapy; D011328:Prions; D014612:Vaccines / Q000627:therapeutic use*
D016915:AIDS Vaccines; D001500:BCG Vaccine; D017325:Hepatitis B Vaccines; D011328:Prions; D014612:Vaccines