Developing effective vaccines: Cues from natural infection

ABSTRACT

The ultimate goal of any vaccine is to generate a heterogeneous and stable pool of memory lymphocytes. Vaccine are designed with the hope to generate antigen specific long-lived T cell responses, as it may be the case in natural infection; however, inducing such response by sub-unit vaccine has been a challenge. Although significant progress has been made, there is lot of scope for designing novel vaccine strategies by taking cues from the natural infection. This review focuses upon the roadblocks and the possible ways to overcome them leading to developing effective vaccines. Here we propose that mimicking the natural course of infection as well as the inclusion of non-target antigens in vaccine formulations might generate heterogeneous pool of memory T cells to ensure long-lived protection.

KEYWORDS:

• Goals of vaccination
• memory
• natural infection
• sub-unit vaccines
• vaccines

Declaration of interest

The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Nirma University for financial support to SKD lab. The authors thank all the present members of the laboratory for their contributions to the work described herein. Thanks to DBT (BT/PR3130/MED/12/519/2011) and DST (EMR/2014/000535), Govt. of India, New Delhi; and GSBTM (GSBTM/MD/PROJECTS/SSA/2243), Govt. of Gujarat for financial support to SKD lab. AMK and VB are supported by GSBTM-JRF and DST INSPIRE-Fellowship, respectively.