The conference celebrating 25 years of the journal Vaccine was an event worthy of the significance of the occasion. Held in the beautiful city of Amsterdam at a magnificent new harborside venue, over 350 delegates enjoyed three days of vibrant presentations, robust discussions and enjoyable networking events. Over 250 papers were presented, with themes that highlighted the breadth, achievements and continuing challenges in the field of Vaccines.
The conference commenced with an opening address by the Chief Editor, Professor Ray Spier. In his address he reiterated that the need for Vaccine as a significant forum for quality scientific communications that is just as current today as it was at its inception 25 years ago. At the time of its inception, Professor Spier and others working in the area of vaccines felt that there was no journal that focused specifically on publishing papers in this area. Due to the efforts of the Chief Editor, the foundation Editorial Board and those that have come since, including the publisher, Elsevier, Vaccine now has a publication output of 30 times its commencing volume per annum, a worldwide readership audience and an impact factor that is still increasing and reflective of its continuing importance in this field.
It was apparent from the presentations at the Conference that a great deal of progress has been made in the field of vaccine development in these 25 years, with many new vaccines becoming available over this period. The conference also highlighted the many challenges that still confront the development of effective approaches to disease prevention. The technological advances over the last three decades have expanded both the number of tools and sensitivity of these tools for scientific investigation. The application of these has brought a higher order of sophistication to investigations and the acquisition of knowledge. The acquisition and application of vast quantities of detailed information and knowledge used to find solutions to developing preventative approaches for the many disease conditions will continue for a long time yet. Greater knowledge has also brought with it a greater awareness of the gaps that remain when it comes to dealing with the complexities surrounding preventing many diseases.
There were many excellent presentations at the conference and it would be impossible in this short editorial to do them justice. Instead, this editorial will focus on the keynote presenters. Professor Ray Spier, Chief Editor, is Professor of Science and Engineering Ethics at the University of Surrey, UK. He opened the conference with an excellent overview of progress in the field of vaccinology and the journal’s role and contribution in communicating the scientific advances and achievements. Dr. Peter Nara, CEO, Chairman and founder of Biological Mimetrics, Inc., reinforced the importance of collaborations and scientific exchanges between the human and veterinary vaccine communities, not only for effective vaccines against zoonotic diseases, but also the value afforded by the earlier ability to evaluate vaccine technologies in veterinary vaccines. Dr. Nara also presented on the challenging issue of the immunodominance of microbial epitopes that appear to act to decoy, misdirect and regulate the host’s immune system. He presented alternative approaches to address this challenge in the selection of vaccine candidate antigens. Dr. Marc Girard, the previous Director General of the Mérieux Foundation, has worked on the development of an HIV vaccine for the last 20 years. His presentation reinforced the importance of achieving an immune barrier to prevent the initial entry of the virus at the various mucosal portals. Tackling HIV has contributed significantly to our knowledge and the potential of DNA vaccine approaches and Professor David Weiner, University of Pennsylvania, elaborated on molecular adjuvants and their contributions to tailoring immune responses. Despite many advances, effective vaccine control of HIV has not been achieved and Dr. Adrian McDermott, Scientific Director of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, encouraged fostering innovation as a means of overcoming the current challenges impeding development of a safe and effective AIDS vaccine.
One of the most recent vaccine successes has been the introduction of the HPV vaccine, targeted at preventing cervical cancer. Dr. Xavier Bosch, chief of cancer Epidemiology at the Institut Catala d’Oncologia, Spain acknowledged the importance of the HPV vaccine and reminded the audience that there is still more work to be done because while a great step forward, there is still a proportion of cervical cancer cases not covered by the vaccine. Dr. Graham Mitchell, Guy’s King’s College and St Thomas’ Hospital’s School of Medicine, shared with the audience the approaches and difficulties in developing malaria vaccines. The first day concluded with an apt presentation by Dr. Gregory Poland, Director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group, predicting a new golden era with the development of directed and predictive vaccinology. Immunogenetics will be a key driver in enabling identification of gene polymorphisms and a move away from the ‘one size fits all’ vaccines. Professor Albert Osterhaus, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, opened day 2 of the conference drawing the audience’s attention to the importance and seriousness of emerging viral infections, highlighting the recent examples of the SARS coronavirus and influenza A viruses (H5N1 and H7N7). He stressed the importance of developing strategies for rapid development and production of vaccines against serious global pandemics caused by emergent virulent viruses. In a similar theme, Dr. Bruce Weniger, leader in the Immunisation Safety Office of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called for simpler and quicker techniques suitable for mass vaccination campaigns using delivery technologies targeting cutaneous routes. This was reinforced by Dr. Abraham Palache, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, who urged action to increase influenza vaccinations through strategies targeting greater awareness of benefits. Dr. James Campbell, University of Toronto, Canada, highlighted the challenges in achieving attitudinal changes and greater awareness of vaccine benefits in health professionals when the growth in alternative or complementary health professionals is contributing to influences away from vaccination. Moving away from traditional injectible vaccination was the subject of Dr. H. Kiyono, The University of Tokyo and CREST, Japan, who presented two novel vaccine strategies for needle- and cold chain-free vaccines.
Bacterial vaccine vectors, such as Salmonella vectors, have been under investigation for around 25 years with none routinely used in humans. Professor Richard Strugnell, University of Melbourne, Australia, shared some of the lessons learnt and how these are being used to address deficiencies in this technology. Effective oral vaccines, in general, remain a challenge and Professor Jennelle Kyd, CQUniversity, Australia, highlighted developments in understanding how M cells might be targeted by oral vaccine delivery technologies. All these presentations reinforced the challenges in inducing immune responses that induce protection, but more importantly, understanding the correlates of induced immunity. Professor Stanley Plotkin, Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Executive Advisor to Sanofi Pasteur highlighted the redundancies in the immune system and the complexity of understanding the different synergies between the innate and adaptive systems in disease protection. It is likely that the era of genomics and understanding innate cellular receptors, such as the toll-like receptors, will open up possibilities for the development of new powerful immunostimulatory molecules. Dr. Rino Rappuoli, Global Head of Vaccines Research, Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, presented the forward thinking concept of utilising structural features of B and T cell epitopes to engineer the desired immunogens.
Those that lasted the full distance of the 3-day program were rewarded by an entertaining, enlightening and interesting final presentation by Professor John Oxford, St Bartholomew’s and the Royal London Hospital. Who can forget his graphic account of opening lead coffins to secure influenza samples preserved since the pandemic early last century? It was an appropriate note upon which to conclude the conference, a graphic reminder of the devastation caused by a serious global pandemic.
Special Edition Editor.