Human vaccines
Ada, G.L.
Developments in Biological Standardization 82: 181-188
1994
ISSN/ISBN: 0301-5149 PMID: 7958473 Document Number: 426891
With very few exceptions the vaccines available for general medical use are to control relatively acute viral or bacterial infections. The vaccines are either live attenuated, inactivated whole organisms or subunit preparations. Developing live attenuated viral vaccines has been and continues to be a popular approach, because generally, they give long-lasting immunity after one or two administrations. Until recently this has been a less successful approach for bacterial vaccines, but the prospects are now brighter. Subunit preparations (oligosaccharides) of encapsulated bacteria as hapten:carrier conjugates also show considerable promise. The demonstration that a viral antigen, the surface antigen of hepatitis B virus, could be produced by genetic-engineering, opened the way to the development of chimeric live vectors.