Could the development of novel vaccine candidates be better directed and predicted
based on the genetic history of an individual and/or a genetically similar sub-population?
Until the late 1990s, vaccines were developed by an empirical method based on the “Isolate–Inactivate–Inject” paradigm. Traditional vaccinology relied on empirical screening of a few candidates at a time - a weakened or inactivated virus particle or a microbial party - such as a viral spike protein responsible for penetrating inside the cell or a bacterial toxin.
But vaccines are amenable to and should be personalized, based on results of high throughput “omics”
technologies-based diagnostics.
Vaccines ability to provide immunity depends on polymorphisms in genes influencing/regulating infection process or immune response.
Next-generation high throughput sequencing technologies (NGS) that became available at the onset of this century enabled identification of mutations targetable by individualized vaccines. Improvements in mRNA delivery had a major impact on mRNA therapeutics and the development of new cancer vaccines.
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