Book Description
Emerging and re-emerging infections, in particular those caused by viruses, are expected to rise in correlation, among other factors, with climate changes. Antibiotic resistance is another issue that will limit the therapeutic arsenal against bacterial and parasitic infections. Therefore, one must be adequately prepared to overcome and prevent current and novel infections, and vaccination remains the optimal way to fight infectious diseases in humans. This is also true for many impacting diseases of livestock and companion animals, to which there are no available vaccines. First (attenuated and inactivated) and second (subunit) generation vaccines have their limitations. To overcome this, efforts have been made in recent years to develop novel vaccine types such as virus-like particle (VLP)-, viral vector-, and DNA-based vaccines in humans and animals. The recent success in utilizing RNA technology based-vaccines to fight SARS-CoV-2 to limit the severity of clinical symptoms and mortality constitutes a promising way to develop such vaccines against animal diseases. Development of novel molecules or materials with adjuvant or immunostimulatory activity to adequately stimulate the innate immune response, and, therefore the pathogen-specific adaptative immune response, as well as the identification of suitable antigenic material that would bring broad protection against infectious agent variants are other key issues to be considered in developing safe and innovative immunization strategies.
