Advances in Viral Vaccine Technology

Abstract

Although the era of vaccination has seen major advances in controlling many important diseases of man and animals, only one viral disease, small pox, has been eliminated globally. Other infectious diseases have proven more resilient to control and therefore, a need exists for the development of better, more effective vaccines. The advent of various genetic and biochemical techniques, combined with the understanding of microbial pathogenesis and host responses of these infections during the last decade has led to the emergence of a variety of new approaches to development of better vaccines, as well as potential methods of delivery of these vaccines. Based on these developments, an attempt will be made at summarizing some of the unique strategies that are being used to combat viral infections. Approaches used to develop synthetic peptide vaccines, recombinant hybrid vaccines, deletion mutants and subunit viral vaccines will be discussed. Furthermore, the advantages and limitations of these approaches will be addressed, as will some of the potential ways of overcoming these limitations.