Recent advances and novel strategies in vaccine development

This review is intended to cover some recent advances in identification of vaccine candidates and in methods of delivery of vaccine antigens. Sequencing of bacterial genomes has led to rapid utilization of the predicted open reading frames to identify potential candidates for evaluation and, with improvements in proteomics combined with microanalytical sequencing techniques, to identify expressed proteins. Expression of vaccine antigens in human food sources has been greatly improved, opening the possibility of orally delivered subunit vaccines, as has the ability to modify the immune response with cytokines and chemokines. These techniques are slowly making their way to human studies and show great promise for future human use.