Book Description

The Human body is a vast network of interacting genes, proteins, and metabolites. These components, which may be considered host factors, change under disease, treatment or healthy condition. While treatment of many diseases depends on therapeutic drugs, vaccines remain the most effective long-term public health intervention to prevent infectious diseases. To date, vaccines have been developed to treat entire populations with little provision for predisposing individual host factor differences. However, the use and application of vaccines is facing multiple challenges with increasing numbers of vaccine non-responders and vaccine-relapsed individuals. The cause of this complication is partially due to host-factors. Another challenge is the adverse effects of vaccines in patients with primary immunodeficiency or autoimmune diseases, as well as vaccine-waning immunity in ageing populations, obese populations, or those with co-infection. To overcome these challenges, the solution may be the design, and formulation of precision vaccines, which are patient-specific.