Novel hepatitis B vaccines

Development of vaccines against hepatitis B has proceeded along four main lines. Human plasma-derived vaccines are safe, effective, and in general use. Subunit polypeptide vaccines formulated in micelles have reached the stage of clinical trials. Recombinant DNA vaccines have been produced in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, notably in yeast. The yeast-derived recombinant vaccine has proved safe and effective in extensive clinical trials, eliciting antibodies of equal quantity and quality of specificity to those elicited by plasma-derived vaccine. DNA recombination has also been applied to the development of hybrid vaccinia virus vaccines which are capable of immunological 'priming'. Finally, chemical synthesis has succeeded in producing small peptides which include specific epitopes eliciting antibody responses in experimental animals. This last approach offers a prospect of ultimately producing multivalent synthetic vaccines against several microbial agents.