About Viral Vectors
Traditional vaccine development platforms such as live-attenuated virus, killed virus, or recombinant subunit-based vaccines are often effective in eliciting long-term immunity to a number of infectious human pathogens. However, for many human pathogens, vaccine platforms such as these are unsuitable for human use due to safety concerns, poor efficacy, or simple impracticality. As a result, much work has focused on the use of recombinant virus vectors as a means for vaccination against human pathogens. Viral vectors can express foreign proteins at high levels in host cells, resulting in strong, long-lasting immune responses against the target proteins. This chapter describes the use of virus vectors in the context of vaccination against human pathogens. Various vector platforms are discussed, compared, and contrasted.