Despite major advances in HIV-1 therapeutics and prevention strategies, the development of a safe and effective prophylactic HIV-1 vaccine will likely be critical for ending the global HIV-1 epidemic. Yet only four HIV-1 vaccine concepts have been tested for clinical efficacy over the past 30 years. In this Commentary, we describe key hurdles facing the HIV-1 vaccine development field and outli...

Reports of unexplained discrepancies in the efficacy of vaccines, s estimated from randomised controlled trials in different parts of he world, are commonplace in the literature [1–4]. Moreover, there s a consistent trend for lower vaccine efficacy when measured in ettings where the disease of interest has a higher incidence, leadng to questions about the appropriateness of pooled estimates. er...

Assessing antigen concentration of vaccine is essential step in determining the quality of the vaccine prior to vaccination. After vaccination, vaccine-induced antibody titer should also be measured to verify the vaccine efficacy. Since conventional assay used for vaccine concentrations and induced Ab-titers is antibody-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, the assay inevitably brings drawba...

Prophylactic human papillomavirus vaccine efficacy is almost too good to be true. The benefits of herd immunity will, however, not be gained without high vaccine coverage. Here the authors of two recent papers on HPV16/18 vaccine efficacy elaborate on the basics and implications of this approach for infection and cancer prevention.

BACKGROUND Limitations of the current annual influenza vaccine have led to ongoing efforts to develop a 'universal' influenza vaccine, i.e., one that targets a ubiquitous portion of the influenza virus so that the coverage of a single vaccination can persist for multiple years. OBJECTIVES To estimate the economic value of a 'universal' influenza vaccine compared to the standard annual influen...

It is important to design HIV vaccine trials to estimate the efficacy of a vaccine in reducing infectiousness in addition to the protective efficacy. Currently planned phase III HIV vaccine field trials in which at-risk individuals are randomized and followed over time do not permit estimation or testing of the vaccine's effect on reducing infectiousness of vaccinees who become infected. We sug...

There is an urgent need for an improved TB vaccine. Vaccine development is hindered by the lack of immune correlates and uncertain predictive value of preclinical animal models. As data become available from human efficacy trials, there is an opportunity to evaluate the predictive value of the criteria used to select candidate vaccines. Here we review the efficacy in animal models of the MVA85A...

Rotavirus vaccine development is a high priority. The association between the tetravalent rhesus-human reassortant rotavirus vaccine and intussusception has increased the need to develop new vaccines. In a small efficacy trial, the human rotavirus vaccine 89-12 recently has been shown to be safe and effective; 184 of the 215 healthy infants initially enrolled in this trial were followed for a s...