Vaccines elicit immune responses, provide protection against microorganisms and are considered as one of the most successful medical interventions against
infectious diseases.
Vaccines can be produced using attenuated virus or bacteria,
recombinant proteins,
bacterial polysaccharides,
carbohydrates or plasmid
DNA. Conventional
vaccines rely on the induction of immune responses against antigenic
proteins to be effective. The genetic diversity of microorganisms, coupled with the high degree of sequence variability in antigenic
proteins, presents a challenge to developing broadly effective conventional
vaccines. The observation that whole
protein antigens are not necessarily essential for inducing immunity has led to the emergence of a new branch of
vaccine design termed 'structural vaccinology'. Structure-based
vaccines are designed on the rationale that protective
epitopes should be sufficient to induce immune responses and provide protection against pathogens. Recent studies demonstrated that designing structure-based
vaccine candidates with multiple
epitopes induce a higher immune response. As yet there are no commercial
vaccines available based on structure-based design and most of the structure-based
vaccine candidates are in the preclinical stages of development. This review focuses on recent advances in structure-based
vaccine candidates and their application in providing protection against
infectious diseases.