Council News Vol. 7, no. 2

PANEL ON VACCINE IMMUNOLOGY DEFINES NEEDS IN THE FIELD

On June 9, NIAID's
Division of Allergy,
Immunology, and
Transplantation invited an
expert panel of vaccine
specialists to confront a
major issue for vaccine
development.
Natural immune responses fail
to clear the initial infection or
provide long-term protection for
Participants
Rafi Ahmed
Jack Bennink
Martin Bryant
Gail Cassell
Mary Lou Clements-Mann
Francis Ennis
Clifford Harding
Charles Janeway
Marc Jenkins
Arthur Krieg
Thomas Monath
Yvonne Paterson
Steven Porcelli
Kenneth Rock
Robert Siliciano
Jonathan Yewdell
a growing number of killer
diseases, including tuberculosis,
malaria, hepatitis C, and HIV.
To produce a vaccine that
breaks through the natural
barrier, scientists need to under
stand hostpathogen
interactions
and the limits
and capabilities of the
immune
response.
The panel of
basic, clinical, and
industry
vaccine
scientists
emphasized
the importance of basic immunology in tackling such
issues.

Key discussion points
Increase study of uniquely human
features of immune responses.
Heighten understanding of the hostpathogen interface.
Limit boundaries between disciplines
and encourage collaborations between
basic immunologists, clinicians, microbiologists, and industry vaccine
researchers.
Develop integrated programs for new
vaccine approaches based on
advances in basic immunology and
insights from clinical studies.

They recommended funding
more basic immunology research relevant to vaccines and
more involvement of basic
immunologists in the vaccine
field.
Basic immunologists and clinical
investigators play complementary roles in studying human
innate and adaptive immunity
and host-pathogen interactions.
Questions concerning the
immunobiology of the host
response are perhaps the most
difficult to answer in vaccine
research today.
For insights into basic vaccine
responses, immunologists would
do well to look for new information from other disciplines,
e.g., microbial genetics and
pathogenesis, as well as data and
materials from clinical studies.

NEW FLU SEQUENCE
WEB SITE
With more than 4,000
nucleotide and amino
acid sequences, the new
Influenza Sequence
Database is a valuable
resource for depositing
and querying sequence
information.
Produced by the Los Alamos
National Laboratory, it now
houses influenza A sequences,
and more are slated to be
added.
You can find the database on
the Internet at http://wwwflu.lanl.gov/index.html.