IS15 Developing vaccines in the era of genomics and toll receptors

Vaccination is considered the most effective medical intervention. In the last century it eliminated or eradicated most of the infectious diseases responsible for much of human morbidity and mortality during recorded history. Most of the vaccines have been developed following the principles set by Pasteur to isolate, inactivate and inject the microorganism causing disease. While these technologies have been very successful in the past and will continue to dominate the short term future of vaccination, the progress in the understanding of the immune system and the availability of the genetic code of microorganisms provide new opportunities allowing to develop vaccines against diseases that have been difficult to tackle following Pasteur's principles. Today novel vaccines can be designed from the genome of microorganisms (reverse vaccinology) and can be made more potent by using novel adjuvants and immunostimulatory molecules targeting the innate immune system. In general, novel vaccines also have an excellent safety profile. The possibility to manipulate the immune system by powerful immunostimulatory molecules also opens the way to tackle by therapeutic vaccination chronic infectious diseases like HCV, HIV and cancer.