Genome-based vaccine design: the promise for malaria and other infectious diseases

Vaccines are one of the most effective interventions to improve public health, however, the generation of highly effective vaccines for many diseases has remained difficult. Three chronic diseases that characterise these difficulties include malaria, tuberculosis and HIV, and they alone account for half of the global infectious disease burden. The whole organism vaccine approach pioneered by Jenner in 1796 and refined by Pasteur in 1857 with the "isolate, inactivate and inject" paradigm has proved highly successful for many viral and bacterial pathogens causing acute disease but has failed with respect to malaria, tuberculosis and HIV as well as many other diseases. A significant advance of the past decade has been the elucidation of the genomes, proteomes and transcriptomes of many pathogens. This information provides the foundation for new 21st Century approaches to identify target antigens for the development of vaccines, drugs and diagnostic tests. Innovative genome-based vaccine strategies have shown potential for a number of challenging pathogens, including malaria. We advocate that genome-based rational vaccine design will overcome the problem of poorly immunogenic, poorly protective vaccines that has plagued vaccine developers for many years.