Vaccination strategies. An overview.
Existing vaccines have contributed significantly to the reduction of the mortality and morbidity burdens of many infectious diseases. In many instances, however, the development of these vaccines has been empirical. Furthermore, the impressive progress in the field of vaccines has been mainly driven the progress in molecular biology and microbiology more than by the progress in immunobiology. Nevertheless, the new challenges vaccinology is facing nowadays can be approached through a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms behind the induction and the maintenance of efficacious immune responses triggered by vaccines. The new vaccination strategies aim at exploiting the new knowledge in the field of dendritic cells (DC; and their role in priming immune responses), in the field of antigen processing and presentation for the generation of antigen-specific cytolytic T cells, and in the field of induction and maintenance of immunological memory, with the ultimate goal of developing better vaccines with an enhanced safety and efficacy not only in children and adults, but also at neonatal age.
Del Giudice
Giuseppe
G
IRIS Research Center, Chiron SpA, Via Fiorentina 1, I-53100 Siena, Italy. giuseppe_del_giudice@chiron.it
D000818:Animals; D017951:Antigen Presentation; D003713:Dendritic Cells / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D007156:Immunologic Memory; D013602:T-Lymphocytes, Cytotoxic / Q000276:immunology; D014611:Vaccination