Vaccines??

What do we need to do to develop a vaccine??
First, decide what sort of immunity you want to provoke. If the organism by itslef evokes a CMI or Ab response, the vaccine must attempt to mimic that, and also raise memory to it.
So, once we know what type of immunity we would like to produce, we need to find an antigen.How do we do that?? There must be certain characteristics which would make the antigen provoke an immune response. Surface presentation, conserved at all stages and within all strains of the organism. Is it very large?? smaller proteins would be easier to manufacture, does it have any biological activity which is vital for functioning of the organism?

Once we have identified an antigen,we look to mimic the response it causes. How?? The first step is to get it into an APC, then depending on whether it is recgonised and drives production of T cells or B cells.
Important questions which must be answered are :
1. How do immune cells recgonise antigens
2. How do different antigens drive different immune arms
3. Can we manipulate the direction of immune response? Can we skew the response in either direction
4. Can we increase the uptake of our protein/ vaccine by the cells we want??
5. How do we increase the number of cells taking part in the response??
6. How are memory cells produced, and can we replicate that?


Tomorrow, I shall try to answer the first question.