Immunity to infection - Editorial overview

As we enter a new millennium, infectious disease remains a major burden on both industrialized and developing countries. Although the advent of antibi otics has helped prevent death in infected individuals, the greatest impact has come from immunization to prevent the infection [I]. Vaccines have era dicated smallpox from the world and polio from the Northern Hemisphere, and have impacted the incidence of measles, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria and m eningitis. Yet despite advances in biotechnology: we desperately need vacci nes to prevent AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, dysentery and other respiratory and diarrheal diseases. The pathogens that cause these diseases have evade d our initial attempts at vaccines. Therefore, more insight into the biolog y of such pathogens and mechanisms of protective immunity is required to de velop the next generation of vaccines. In this section we therefore review new advances in microbial immunology and vaccinology.