Vaccine Development – The First Steps
Vaccines work by ‘showing’ the immune system a weak or inactive pathogen, or part of the pathogen against which an immune response is needed to provide protection against future infection. …
Course: Vaccine Development: Finding a Vaccine for COVID-19 and Future Pandemics
How do we know if a vaccine is safe?
Safety testing is an integral component of vaccine development and use. New vaccines can only be licensed once sufficient evidence of safety is available. Careful safety monitoring of newly licensed …
What is the difference between an outbreak, epidemic and a pandemic?
It is widely recognised that vaccination has an important role in controlling outbreaks and pandemics of infectious diseases. Understanding the difference between an outbreak and pandemic is important, as vaccines …
Why do we need a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infection?
COVID-19 first emerged at the end of 2019 in the Wuhan province of China. By the 11th of March 2020, the WHO Director general had declared a COVID-19 pandemic with …
Vaccine preparedness case studies
We will now explore two case studies which illustrate how vaccine preparedness can be achieved. The first focuses on influenza vaccine preparedness and the second on Rift Valley fever. Influenza …
Surveillance and Vaccine Development
COVID-19 has demonstrated the ability of a pandemic to cause huge economic and social upheaval in addition to excess morbidity and mortality. It is crucial that work is undertaken to …
Challenges in Developing New Vaccines: Lack of Financial Incentives
As well as expense and time, another challenge of developing a vaccine is a lack of financial incentive for vaccine developers. Neglected tropical diseases include infectious diseases that cause high …
What are the challenges in developing new vaccines?
Vaccines have a major role to play in public health. However, despite decades of vaccine development there is currently only licensed vaccines for 26 infectious diseases. These are listed in …
Viral Vectored Vaccines
Genetic material from the infectious agent for which a vaccine is required is incorporated into an unrelated virus which then acts as carrier or vector of the genetic material. Once …
RNA/DNA Vaccines
RNA and DNA are types of genetic material that encode specific proteins. Specific SARS-CoV-2 proteins, for example the spike proteins which mediate viral entry into cells, can be used as …
Live attenuated/Inactivated vaccines
Live attenuated vaccines are made from the whole SARS-CoV-2 virus which is modified so it is less infectious and incapable of causing disease, but still stimulates an immune response. Live …
How do scientists make sure new vaccines are safe to use?
Ideally, adverse events are compared between participants who receive the vaccine and those who receive a placebo or comparator vaccine. This helps to distinguish after effects (AEs) directly related to …
These articles are from the online course:
Vaccine Development: Finding a Vaccine for COVID-19 and Future Pandemics