Post-genomic vaccine development

For over a century, vaccines were developed according to Pasteur’s principles of isolating, inactivating and injecting the causative agent of an infectious disease. The availability of a complete microbial genome sequence in 1995 marked the beginning of a genomic era that has allowed scientists to change the paradigm and approach vaccine development starting from genomic information, a process named reverse vaccinology. This can be considered as one of the most powerful examples of how genomic information can be used to develop therapeutic interventions, which were difficult or impossible to tackle with conventional approaches. As the genomic era progressed, it became apparent that multi-strain genome analysis is fundamental to the design of universal vaccines. In the post-genomic era, the next challenge of the vaccine biologist will be the merging of the vaccinology with structural biology.