Therapeutic vaccines against infectious diseases

Therapeutic vaccines against chronic infectious diseases aim at eliciting broad humoral and cellular immune responses against multiple target antigens. Importantly, the development of such vaccines will help to establish surrogate markers of protection in humans and thus will augment the subsequent development of efficient prophylactic vaccines. A combination of synthetic small-molecule drugs and immunotherapeutics is likely to represent a powerful means of controlling chronic infections in the future. Challenges faced in developing therapeutic vaccines include the following: first, overcoming the potential impairment of immune responses due to established infection; second, optimizing schedules of vaccine administration in combination with standard of care chemotherapy; and third, defining what biological and immunological read-outs should be used to infer vaccine efficacy.