Strategic Approaches to Vaccine Design against Negative Strand Virus Diseases 2.0

Vaccines are designed to induce an immune response which will mimic part or all of the response to the actual pathogen A requirement is for immunological memory to be established resulting in rapid recall when the wild type infection is encountered. For viral vaccines this memory response needs to ideally induce both humeral and cell mediated responses and be fully protective against the disease developing. Ideally sterilising immunity should be achieved to prevent virus transmission to other individuals. Many approaches have been taken to design virus vaccines against negative strand viruses (NSV) to try and achieve this aim with some more successful than others. These include more conventional attenuated and inactivated vaccines as well as subunit, vectored or nucleic acid vaccines. In the veterinary world, vaccines differentiating infected from vaccinated animals (DIVA) vaccines are often required along with associated discriminating immunological assays. Vaccine design is dependent on a range of different factors including the route of administration, the target tissues, the course and rate of infection of the pathogen as well as geographical, environmental and user requirements. This special issue focuses on the range of strategies that have been adopted to design both human and veterinary vaccines against NSV diseases, the underlying mechanisms of induction of immunity and the effectiveness of these approaches.