Beyond epitopes: future and application of computational vaccinology

Vaccine research has significantly changed face within the last decade. Newly developed vaccines usually comprise defined subunits and often next generation adjuvants. On the downside, as in many areas ultimately of interest to clinical development, basic research does only slowly translate to bedside therapy. Part of the reason can be found in regulatory processes. On the other hand new technologies such as NGS (Next Generation Sequencing), Systems Biology, recently unimagined computing and storage power and suitable information technologies allow new perspectives and approaches to the field, enlarging the gap between possible and approved even more. Computational vaccinology is an aid to vaccine developers to help bridge this gap, but naturally only if it is accepted as tool and made use of. The aim of this commentary is to point out recent developments and trends and show how this can invigorate vaccine development. It is felt necessary to make a case for rational vaccine design augmented by computational vaccinology for the community to harness the full potential of emerging and already burgeoning technologies and concepts such as Next Generation Sequencing and Systems Biology.