Vaccine Experimentation - Essay Example

Much of what is currently done in vaccine production is based upon years of research on immunology using mouse models. As scientists soon discovered with the advent of highly sophisticated laboratory equipment and techniques, this misrepresent the processes that underlie the human immune response against diseases. As well, laboratories also do not share findings in the community for fears of their patents being stolen. This limits the potential exponential vaccine development. Moreover, our current vaccines have been limited to using just the humoral immunity and subsequently treating just infectious diseases.

What about the lifestyle diseases such as cardiovascular problems that causes most of the worldwide mortality nowadays? Thus, scientists currently explore ways on producing vaccines based on the human immune response to a molecular level, and on making individualized vaccines that take into account variations in immune responses based on genetic differences. Using a microscopic perspective, the history of a disease, both its natural flow and treated course, are being determined for a better understanding of human disease.

Tapping all components of the human immune response, and not just the antibody-mediated, humoral adaptive immune response being used in most of the vaccine today, is also being looked upon. However, this necessitates a strong collaboration among scientists who have specialized in molecular and cellular biology, bioinformatics, vaccinology, and medicine as well. Because of the complexity of each of these fields, one laboratory cannot claim mastery over all of them. That is why an open communication is needed among the key players in vaccine development.

Hopefully, such will be done to hasten production of vaccines that can confer better protection for humans. Reference: Germain, Ronald, N. “Vaccines and the Future of Human Immunology.” Immunity 33 (2010): 441-450.