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Abstract
Immune response to a subset of antigens and epitopes derived from an infectious pathogen may be sufficient for competent protection; immune recognition of every potential epitope derived from the pathogen’s genome does not appear to be required. The pneumococcal and hepatitis vaccines, both of which are subunit vaccines, illustrate this premise. Similarly, ‘immunome-derived vaccines’ are based on the concept that response to the subset of antigens and epitopes that interface with the host immune system (the immunome) and not the whole organism (represented by the proteome or genome) can be sufficient for protection. Competent immune responses to cancer are also probably restricted to the neoplasm’s ‘immunome’, although the set of antigens that drive successful immune response to cancer cells has proven more difficult to uncover. Researchers are now using bioinformatics sequence analysis tools, epitope mapping tools, microarrays and high-throughput immunology assays to discover the components of the immunome, which are then used to compose these new vaccines. At least one immunome-derived vaccine is in clinical trials and many others are in the vaccine pipeline. Due to the rapid improvement of immunoinformatics tools and immunological assays, the era of immunome-derived vaccines has begun.