Risk assessment in new and conventional vaccines

New technology, and in particular new molecular biology tools, have opened up access to new generations of vaccines or control tests. DNA vaccines are of particular interest since only the gene is injected and, as a consequence, specific risks are associated with this kind of vaccination. Some strategies are presented here to improve DNA vaccine efficacy, which can in some cases result in the reduction of the quantity of plasmid needed and therefore limits the risk. Specific tools to study the distribution of plasmids inside the body as well as tools to detect plasmid insertion inside the host genome have been developed. A final part of this paper will present briefly the new tools which have been or can be developed to detect contaminants in vaccines.