Policy

Vaccines - current status and future needs

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Prophylactic immunisation against infectious disease has been the most successful medical intervention yet in reducing mortality. From the introduction of vaccination against smallpox at the end of the eighteenth century, there has been continuous progress in producing safe and effective vaccines against a number of common diseases. These vaccines were bacterial toxoids (diphtheria and tetanus); killed whole organisms (e.g. typhoid, cholera, pertussis and the Salk polio vaccine); or live attenuated organisms (e.g. BCG, yellow fever, the Sabin polio vaccine, measles, mumps and rubella).
Effective vaccines have yet to be made against many microbial diseases. In addition, the use of vaccines is now being extended to purposes other than the prophylaxis of infectious disease.

· Vaccines are being developed to control existing, persistent infectious disease.
· Therapeutic vaccination against tumour-associated antigens has long been investigated as a form of tumour therapy and the approach now shows some promise.
· Contraceptive vaccines directed against human chorionic gonadotrophins have been developed and shown to be effective.
· Attempts to counter drug addiction by vaccination with drug immuno-conjugates have been reported.
· The use of immunisation to counter autoimmune diseases is also being studied.

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Professor Peter Lachmann, PMedSci (Chairman)
President, Academy of Medical Sciences

Professor Jangu Banatvala, CBE, FMedSci
Emiritus Professor of Clinical Virology

Professor Jennie Blackwell, FMedSci
Director, Wellcome Trust Centre for the Molecular Mechanisms of Disease
Cambridge

Professor George Griffin, FMedSci
Head of Department, Dean of Clinical Affairs and Professor of Infectious Disease and Medicine, St George’s Hospital Medical School, London

Professor Adrian Hill, FMedSci
Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and Professor of Human Genetics
University of Oxford

Professor Thomas Lehner, FMedSci
Professor of Basic and Applied Immunology and Head of the Department of Immunobiology
Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School, London

Professor Andrew McMichael, FRS, FMedSci
Director, MRC Human Immunology Unit
John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford

Professor Richard Moxon, FMedSci
Action Research Professor on Paediatrics
University of Oxford

Professor Geoffrey Smith, FMedSci
Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow
Imperial College, London

Professor Peter Smith, FMedSci
Head of the Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases and Professor of Tropical Epidemiology
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Professor Freda Stevenson, FMedSci
Professor of Immunology and Consultant Immunologist
St. George’s Hospital Medical School
London

Professor Herman Waldmann, FRS, FMedSci
Professor of Pathology and Head
Sir William Dunn School of Pathology
Oxford

Professor Arie Zuckerman, FMedSci
Royal Free and University College Medical School
London

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• Vaccines - current status and future needs report [140.25k]

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