Bacterial toxin vaccines

A rebirth of interest and activity in vaccine development has occurred in recent years which is probably due to the persistence of threat to health by infectious diseases, as well as technological advances which have made possible new approaches to solve old problems. Most work being done today with vaccine development against diseases caused entirely or in part by bacterial toxins falls into the categories of, attenuated organisms (whether by classical means or application of newly developed genetic technologies), and/or toxin subunits (derived by genetic manipulations, peptide synthesis, or chemical modification of toxins). This review discusses some of these new approaches in general as well as specific examples of their application to several bacterial diseases whose pathologies involve toxins.