What's next in the topic of vaccines?

As was discussed in my last post, vaccines have been a successful part of medical history for over two centuries. Some might go as far to say that they are “among the most effective interventions in the history of the public health” (Koff et al., 2014). With the discovery of each new vaccine, another disease begins to lose its battle against the human race. However, some of those germs that lead to disease are persistent and do whatever they can to attempt to stay one step ahead of current advances. This is evident with cases of influenza. Each year, new strands of influenza are discovered and as a result new influenza vaccines are created and mass-produced for the general public. These influenza germs that we attempt to fight off each year, through the current influenza vaccination, continue to mutate in an effort to withstand the antibodies that are targeted to kill them. Scientists and medical professionals are constantly looking for new ways to combat the viruses among us.

In February of this year, 35 vaccine experts got together in California for the first of a three part meeting series to discuss an innovative approach to vaccines. The driving force bringing this group together was “the need for a new, human immunology-based clinical-research initiative to accelerate the development of new and improved vaccines” due to limitations and challenges that are reached when conducting testing on animals (Koff et al., 2014). This initiative will be known as the “Human Vaccines Project” which hopes to discover a plan to prevent and control major diseases and cancer through vaccines.

According to Koff et al. (2014), this group of experts agreed that the three hindrances to improving today’s vaccines are:

1.     Inadequate understanding of how to generate specific, potent, broad and durable immune responses in humans.

2.     The lack of understanding of the precise antigens needed to elicit protective immunity against intractable pathogens and cancer.

3.     The lack of understanding of how to best optimize vaccine efficacy in populations, ranging from newborns to the elderly.

If these three areas can be overcome, then these scientists believe that our society will be on its way to tackling major diseases and cancer through the use of vaccines. In order to get to their end goal, and once the initial hindrances are overcome, several significant steps will need to be taken. This is where the Human Vaccine Project plays is role. Because animal testing only offers so many scientific results, the idea is to take the testing to the human level. “The group concluded that comprehensive assessments of human responses to licensed and experimental vaccines in rapid, focused and iterative clinical research trials could create novel strategies for the generation of long-lived protective immune responses in humans and thus enable the accelerated development of vaccines against infectious diseases and cancer” (Koff et al., 2014).  Below is a chart that helps to visual the plan constructed by the experts at this recent meeting.

 (Image from www.nature.com)

In theory, this sounds like this is the next step to take, but who would be a willing participant in a study like this?

The next two meetings are scheduled to meet later this year and the early part next year with the project’s implementation date of 2015. The next meeting will discuss the possible organizational structure and its business plan followed by the final meeting, which aims to meet with potential stakeholders, identify funds for the project, and create a desired timeline of milestones.

To view more about the Human Vaccines Project and the grant that is funding it, click here.

For the complete article, “Toward a Human Vaccines Project”, in Nature Immunology, click here to view it.

Reference

Koff, W. C., Gust, I. D., & Plotkin, S. A. (2014, July). Toward a Human Vaccines Project. Nature Immunology, 15, 589-592.