[SARS vaccines]

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is an emerging disease derived from wild animals and is highly pathogenic with a high mortality. A novel coronavirus SARS coronavirus was identified to be a causative agent for SARS. Since its discovery, many trials have been executed to establish the prophylactic and therapeutics toward SARS using laboratory animals. A number of different types of vaccines, such as inactivated virus vaccine, subunit vaccine, DNA vaccine and vaccine using viral expression vector as well as attenuated live vaccine so far reported indicate that neutralizing antibodies play an important role for protection. However, vaccine applicable to humans with the high efficacy and safety has not yet been reported.