Vaccines for emerging pathogens: from research to the clinic

Williamson, E. D.

Historically, vaccines have had enormous impact on human health, eradicating smallpox, polio and many other childhood and adult infections of public health concern. Worldwide, attention is now turning to the task of vaccines for these emerging and re-emerging pathogens, with renewed interest and support from international governments, the World Health Organization (WHO) and organizations such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) and philanthropic organizations such as the Gates Foundation. This review series sets out to survey the progress to date. In their article, Afrough, Dowall and Hewson [1] review a range of emerging viruses and make the case for applying molecular techniques to understand viral pathogenesis. The authors discuss the exploitation of vaccination methods based on replicating, attenuated and non-replicating viral vectors; they suggest that the use of viral vector platforms should accelerate progress, as the insertion of a gene for a new antigen allows rapid targeting of newly emerging diseases. They point out, however, that despite 50 years of research and the preclinical evaluation of many vaccine candidates for the Lassa fever virus, for example, that no vaccine has yet been approved and suggest that economic factors such as the lack of a commercial market have impeded progress. There needs to be concerted international action to overcome the regulatory hurdles to bring vaccines for these emerging pathogens into clinical use.