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Review
. 2024 Sep 19;187(19):5171-5194.
doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.07.021.

Transforming vaccinology

Rino Rappuoli  1 , Galit Alter  2 , Bali Pulendran  3
Affiliations
Review

Transforming vaccinology

Rino Rappuoli et al. Cell. .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic placed the field of vaccinology squarely at the center of global consciousness, emphasizing the vital role of vaccines as transformative public health tools. The impact of vaccines was recently acknowledged by the award of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for their seminal contributions to the development of mRNA vaccines. Here, we provide a historic perspective on the key innovations that led to the development of some 27 licensed vaccines over the past two centuries and recent advances that promise to transform vaccines in the future. Technological revolutions such as reverse vaccinology, synthetic biology, and structure-based design transformed decades of vaccine failures into successful vaccines against meningococcus B and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Likewise, the speed and flexibility of mRNA vaccines profoundly altered vaccine development, and the advancement of novel adjuvants promises to revolutionize our ability to tune immunity. Here, we highlight exciting new advances in the field of systems immunology that are transforming our mechanistic understanding of the human immune response to vaccines and how to predict and manipulate them. Additionally, we discuss major immunological challenges such as learning how to stimulate durable protective immune response in humans.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of interests G.A. is an employee of Moderna. R.R. has been an employee of GSK. B.P. has served or is serving on the External Immunology Network of GSK and on the scientific advisory boards of Sanofi, Medicago, CircBio, and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Technological breakthroughs throughout history have propelled vaccine innovation.
A. The figure highlights major advances over the history of the vaccine field that dramatically accelerate the field of vaccinology.
Figure 2:
Figure 2:. The major vaccine platforms for infectious diseases in humans.
The cartoon shows the various vaccine platforms that have evolved over the past 200 years and examples of licensed vaccines that fall into each vaccine platform class. For some recently developed vaccines, including the COVID-19 and RSV vaccines, we have indicated the vaccine developers in parentheses.
Figure 3:
Figure 3:. The Systems Immunology Toolkit.
The cartoon depicts new technologies that have emerged over the past decades that are key to the revolution in vaccinology and immune evaluation.
Figure 4:
Figure 4:. Universal Challenges in Vaccinology.
The graph shows major future challenges in vaccine design. Strides to improve durability, enhanced cytotoxic T cells, program tissue resident immunity, develop vaccines rapidly, and develop regulatory strategies around highly predictive mechanistic biomarkers promises to revolutionize vaccine development for infectious diseases and beyond.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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