Challenges and Opportunities for Bacterial Vaccine Development in the 21st Century

With the convergence of modern technology in genomics, proteomics, carbohydrate, protein and lipid biochemistry as well as decades of experience in vaccine development and delivery of immunization programs, the Global Vaccine Action Plan has declared 2011 to 2020 as ‘The Decade of Vaccines’. This review focuses on bacterial vaccines and summarises the current state of vaccinology in bacteriology and looks forward to the potential of how the newer technologies can impact our knowledge of bacterial diseases and their control through vaccine development. The major breakthroughs in the last couple of decades include low cost high throughput genomics, proteomics, cellular immunology and the delicate network of immune-cytokines, bioinformatics, immune-informatics, and disease modelling. Together, these newer developments can provide a real impact on our understanding of infectious diseases and their control by vaccination.