Vaccines Targeting Bacterial Infections

Dear Colleagues,

Vaccines against bacterial pathogens are recognised as incredibly effective tools, capable of preventing morbidity and mortality caused by a wide variety of pathogens every year. However, despite the global success of vaccines against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Haemophilus influenzae, Neisseria meningitidis, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Corynebacterium diphtheriae and Bordetella pertussis, these bacterial pathogens still evade eradication. There is therefore an urgent unmet need for improved vaccines to combat these and other circulating and emerging bacterial infections. This need has become especially pressing in the face of growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which is steadily reducing the effectiveness of therapeutic agents previously relied upon to treat bacterial infections. In addition, as the population of older adults continues to grow, close attention should be paid to age-related changes which affect the innate and adaptive immune systems, modulating older individuals’ capacity to mount an effective immune response. This ‘inflammaging’ and immunosenescence may mandate different vaccine requirements at different stages of life—a factor which has often been overlooked in bacterial vaccine design.

In recent years it has become evident that a major hurdle to vaccine development is the lack of knowledge regarding antigen-specific immunity for a variety of bacterial infections. This Special Issue of Vaccines focuses on research that aims to understand how adaptive and innate immunity against bacterial pathogens can be harnessed to develop new antigens, adjuvants, and vaccine delivery systems which will provide life-long protection.

Dr. Stephanie Ascough
Guest Editor

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