Vaccine Design and Therapeutics for Emerging Infectious Diseases
A special issue of Pathogens (ISSN 2076-0817). This special issue belongs to the section "Vaccines and Therapeutic Developments".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 July 2026
Special Issue Editors
Interests: vaccine development and mucosal immunity against lung infectious disease
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Pulmonary infectious diseases remain a major global health threat. Seasonal viral infections alone develop in more than 1 billion people worldwide annually, leading to 3–5 million cases of severe illness and 290,000–650,000 respiratory deaths. In the United States, the CDC estimates that influenza causes 9.3–41 million illnesses annually, resulting in 120,000–710,000 hospitalizations. This substantial burden underscores the need for next-generation vaccine strategies that effectively stimulate mucosal immunity in the lungs.
The challenge posed by these infections is further aggravated by the rise in multidrug resistance, particularly in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which remains highly prevalent in many developing countries and is a major cause of morbidity in immunocompromised individuals. Globally, there were an estimated 10.8 million new TB cases in 2023. World Health Organization Drug-resistant TB, such as MDR/RR-TB, accounts for around 450,000 incident cases per year. In some regions, up to 18 % of previously treated TB cases are MDR/RR-TB.
Against this backdrop, vaccine development aimed at eliciting mucosal immunity—particularly in the respiratory tract—offers a promising path forward. Secretory IgA antibodies and tissue-resident memory T cells in the airway could neutralize pathogens early, reducing infection, severity, and transmission. Emerging platforms—including intranasal or inhaled vaccines using viral vectors, nanoparticles, or mRNA—are being optimized to deliver the antigen directly to the lung mucosa. However, challenges remain: achieving durable mucosal responses, ensuring safety, and overcoming immune tolerance are all active areas of research.
Enhanced understanding of host immune responses against these pathogens—including how mucosal IgA and resident T cells respond to M. tuberculosis and other pulmonary bacteria—would greatly inform the design of more effective vaccines and therapeutics. By integrating immunological insights with innovative delivery platforms, next-generation vaccines could markedly reduce the infection, disease severity, transmission, and devastating impact of drug-resistant respiratory infections.
Dr. Amit K. Singh
Dr. Vijay Kumar
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- vaccines
- therapeutics
- infectious diseases
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