Figure 4.

Looking to the future for modular vaccine assembly. (Top left) Stockpiling one underlying particulate scaffold against multiple diseases may facilitate cheap rapid production of vaccines, in the face of pandemics, bioterrorism, and tropical diseases. (Top right) Personalized therapeutic vaccines are coming into view through next-generation sequencing identifying cancer neo-epitopes. One may envision neo-epitopes being chemically synthesized and coupled specifically to a virus-like particle (VLP) scaffold for immunization. (Bottom left) On-site synthesis of Tag-antigens becomes possible with cell-free protein synthesis stable at ambient temperature. Subsequent coupling to pre-assembled virus-like nanoparticles may allow in-field vaccine generation, with minimal space and weight footprint for a large number of vaccine targets. (Bottom right) Stockpiling may drive down costs of VLP vaccines for animal health applications, to combat zoonoses, for pets and for agriculture.