Vaccine Production, Safety, and Efficacy

Brouwers, Thomas J.; Van der Zeijst, Bernard A.M.

Vaccination was a key factor in reducing viral diseases after the transition of a nomadic lifestyle to a sedentary society. Without vaccination, our highly urbanized society would not be sustainable. Vaccine development is an, increasingly, long and expensive process. This poses severe problems for the development of vaccines against new emerging viral diseases. Therefore, interest to speed up development timelines has increased considerably. Clinical evaluation of protection and safety and licensing take up most of the time. But also building scalable production facilities require time and money. This article describes the traditional approach to vaccine R&D and possible improvements, particularly towards being better preparared for emerging viral diseases. It was written just before the covid-19 outbreeak in 2020. We have added a final paragraph on the development of covid-19 vaccines.