Vaccines for emerging pathogens: from research to the clinic

Williamson, E. D.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. example for simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), is promising and the authors conclude that if viral-vectored vaccines can also be developed to induce HLA-E-restricted T cells in human patients, this could lead to vaccines with broad, fast-acting and appropriately targeted immunogenicity and efficacy. This review series also includes articles on bacterial pathogens, such as the Burkholderia species, which cause significant morbidity. Morici, Torres and Titball [3] address progress in the development of vaccines for melioidosis, a bacterial disease which causes an estimated 165 000 human cases per year, with a mortality rate which can reach 40% where there are co-morbidities, such as diabetes. This disease occurs in tropical areas of the globe, with a high incidence in northern Australia and South East Asia, where the disease is considered endemic. The causative agent, Burkholderia pseudomallei, has multiple virulence mechanisms, including efflux pumps, which effectively confer antibiotic resistance. The authors describe the need for multiple components in a vaccine for melioidosis in order to defeat the secretion systems and other virulence mechanisms that this bacterium possesses, as well as the heterogeneity of B. pseudomallei strains. In the last decade, progress towards efficacious candidate vaccines has been made and is comprehensively reviewed here. However, while initial protection against exposure is achievable in preclinical models, the inability so far to induce sterilizing immunity to B. pseudomallei remains a challenge.