Applied genome research in the field of human vaccines

Prophylactic vaccination has made an essential contribution to the improvem ent of human health over the 20th century. However, we still lack efficient vaccines against major human diseases such as malaria or tuberculosis. Tod ay, the design of therapeutic vaccines referred to as 'pharmaccines' is act ively investigated in order to treat diseases such as cancer. In that conte xt, novel ways to rationalize and accelerate vaccine discovery are needed. A series of advances in the fields of molecular biology and computer scienc e, have greatly accelerated the rate at which candidate vaccine antigens ca n be discovered. In this review, we will present and discuss how applied ge nome research may facilitate antigen discovery and the design of new prophy lactic and therapeutic vaccines. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.