Suchergebnisse

Vaccine biomarkers are critical to many aspects of vaccine development and licensure, including bridging findings in pre-clinical studies to clinical studies, predicting potential adverse events, and predicting vaccine efficacy. Despite advances in our understanding of various biological pathways, and advances in systems analyses of the immune response, there remains much to learn about qualitative and quantitative aspects of the human host response to vaccination. To stimulate discussion and identify opportunities for collaborative ways to advance the field of vaccine biomarkers, A Next Generation Vaccine Biomarker workshop was held in Ottawa. The two day workshop, sponsored by the National Research Council Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Public Health Agency of Canada, Pfizer, and Medicago, brought together stakeholders from Canadian and international industry, government and academia. The workshop was grouped in themes, covering vaccine biomarker challenges in the pre-clinical and clinical spaces, veterinary vaccines, regulatory challenges, and development of biomarkers for adjuvants and cancer vaccines. The use of case studies allowed participants to identify the needs and gaps requiring innovation. The workshop concluded with a discussion on opportunities for vaccine biomarker discovery, the Canadian context, and approaches for moving forward. This article provides a synopsis of these discussions and identifies steps forward for advancing vaccine biomarker research in Canada.

Learning from the COVID-19 Pandemic: Next-generation universal vaccines and immunotherapeutic research
With the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, we need to focus on universal vaccines and/or immunotherapeutic strategies and technologies to tackle ongoing endemic infections with SARS-CoV2, influenza, and RSV and prepare for any future pandemics, says Dr Babita Agrawal. In the 21st century, we have witnessed the emergence of respiratory infections with pandemic potential, like corona and influenza viruses, on multiple occasions. Due to the global dissemination of one such coronavirus, SARS-CoV2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus type-2), the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a worldwide pandemic in March 2020. The global public health emergency was declared over in May 2023 by the WHO, but infections with variants of SARS-CoV2 continue to evolve and cause infections worldwide. (1) Besides public health measures, developing, approving, and implementing vaccines against SARS-CoV2 have helped mitigate and end the pandemic. However, the existing vaccines against SARS-CoV2 are not preventive, do not induce mucosal immunity, induce only short-term protection and are ineffective against emerging variants, thereby requiring regular updated boosters.

Da war noch ...

Influenza virus infections are a major public health threat. Vaccination is available, but unpredictable antigenic changes in circulating strains require annual modification of seasonal influenza vaccines. Vaccine effectiveness has proven limited, particularly in certain groups, such as the elderly. Moreover, preparedness for upcoming pandemics is challenging because we can predict neither the strain that will cause the next pandemic nor the severity of the pandemic. The European Union fosters research and innovation to develop novel vaccines that evoke broadly protective and long-lasting immune responses against both seasonal and pandemic influenza, underpinned by a political commitment to global public health.

Technological advances, together with a better understanding of the molecular biology of infectious microorganisms, are creating exciting possibilities for a new generation of replicating vaccines. Historically, live vaccines have been either directly derived from a natural source or attenuated by empirical approaches using serial passages and host cell adaptation. Currently, we are witnessing a quantum leap in our technological capabilities to specifically modify the genetic make-up of viruses and bacteria, making it possible to generate improved live vaccines and to develop completely new types of replicating vaccines, such as vectored vaccines, single-round infectious vaccines and replicon vaccines. This book highlights some of the most exciting recent developments towards a new generation of replicating vaccines.

Next Generation Ireland tackles the essential challenges confronting Irish politics and society, the economy, the environment, and Ireland's relationship with the rest of the world. It brings together ten young Irish men and women to answer the fundamental question, 'What now?'.

Front Cover -- Next Generation Biomonitoring: Part 1 -- Copyright -- Contents -- Contributors -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Chapter One: Biomonitoring for the 21st Century: Integrating Next-Generation Sequencing Into Ecological Network Analysis -- 1. Introduction -- 2. How Are Ecological Networks Useful for Biomonitoring? -- 2.1. Traditional Biomonitoring Is Typically Descriptive and Rarely Provides an Understanding of the Underlying Mechanisms ... -- 2.2. Ecological Networks Provide a Framework to Describe and Monitor Ecological Processes and Ecosystem Functions -- 2.3. Ecological Network Structure Characterizes Ecosystem Properties -- 2.4. Knowledge of Ecological Networks Helps to Assess the Effect(s) of Environmental Changes on Ecosystem Processes and A ... -- 2.5. The Robustness of Networks of Ecological Networks: Applications for Understanding Species and Habitat Loss, Restorat ... -- 3. Ecological Networks Can Be Challenging to Build Using Conventional Approaches -- 4. Combining NGS With ENA: Opportunities and Challenges -- 4.1. Using NGS to Construct Ecological Networks -- 4.2. PCR Bias and Abundance Estimation in NGS Community Analyses -- 4.3. NGS Without a Prior PCR Step -- 4.4. Detection of Species Interactions Using Molecular Tools -- 4.5. How to Deal With Interactions Not Directly Resolved by NGS: Are Species Association Networks Species Interaction Net ... -- 5. Machine Learning as a Way to Rapidly Build Molecular Ecological Networks in a Rapid and Reliable Way? -- 5.1. Learning Ecological Networks From Data -- 5.2. Exploiting eDNA-Derived Information as a Source for Network Data -- 6. NGS Network Data Sharing -- 6.1. The Importance of a Dedicated NGS Network Database: Linking DNA Sequences and Ecological Interactions to Limit Speci