About this Research Topic
Reverse Vaccinology is a new approach to design vaccines from genomic information with the help of bioinformatics. This ‘top-down’, computer data-based approach to vaccine design contrasts with the classical, ‘bottom up’ laboratory-based, hypothesis-driven analysis of microbes to identify components that could elicit protective immunity.
Reverse Vaccinology was first used in the 1990’s as a discovery tool to identify candidate antigens for a meningococcal vaccine. Since then, much has changed through the explosion of whole genome sequencing (WGS) data and technologies that facilitate vaccine design. These include contributions from transcriptomics, proteomics, immune profiling, structural biology, systems biology and mathematical modelling. Thus today, the ‘top- down’ approach and its change of direction and action in vaccine research, captured in the term Reverse Vaccinology, embodies much more than innovation in antigen discovery. Major examples include the utility of WGS in providing a systematic approach to population and evolutionary biology, a foundation stone in characterizing epidemiological trends crucial to the design of vaccines both for infectious and non-infectious diseases. The synergism of immunoinformatics and systems immunobiology with WGS provides crucial tools that consider not just the challenges of the molecular diversity of target antigens, but the importance of expression levels and how these variables, along with host genetic variation, impact on immune responsiveness. Structural biology has provided critical insights into the analysis of epitopes, including allosteric changes in antibody-ligand interactions.
A quarter of a century since WGS revolutionized biology, in this Research Topic, we aim to look critically at what has been achieved via the use of high-throughput technologies and how best they can be used to galvanize future efforts in order to improve global public health through their rigorous and imaginative exploitation in facilitating the development of a broad range of novel vaccines.
We welcome the submission of Original Research, Reviews and Mini-Reviews covering, but not limited to, the following topics:
1. Reverse Vaccinology: past, current and future contributions to the research and development of vaccines.
2. The impact of complete genome sequencing on the molecular epidemiology of pathogens.
3. Interrogation of host immune responses to vaccines using high throughput RNA sequencing.
4. Technologies for antigen discovery.
5. Technologies for epitope mapping and prediction.
6. Computational simulation of immune responses.
7. Modelling antigen-antigen receptor interactions.
8. Utility of reverse vaccinology for preventing infectious diseases.
9. Utility of reverse vaccinology for preventing non-infections diseases.
10. Neoantigens for cancer vaccines.
Reverse Vaccinology was first used in the 1990’s as a discovery tool to identify candidate antigens for a meningococcal vaccine. Since then, much has changed through the explosion of whole genome sequencing (WGS) data and technologies that facilitate vaccine design. These include contributions from transcriptomics, proteomics, immune profiling, structural biology, systems biology and mathematical modelling. Thus today, the ‘top- down’ approach and its change of direction and action in vaccine research, captured in the term Reverse Vaccinology, embodies much more than innovation in antigen discovery. Major examples include the utility of WGS in providing a systematic approach to population and evolutionary biology, a foundation stone in characterizing epidemiological trends crucial to the design of vaccines both for infectious and non-infectious diseases. The synergism of immunoinformatics and systems immunobiology with WGS provides crucial tools that consider not just the challenges of the molecular diversity of target antigens, but the importance of expression levels and how these variables, along with host genetic variation, impact on immune responsiveness. Structural biology has provided critical insights into the analysis of epitopes, including allosteric changes in antibody-ligand interactions.
A quarter of a century since WGS revolutionized biology, in this Research Topic, we aim to look critically at what has been achieved via the use of high-throughput technologies and how best they can be used to galvanize future efforts in order to improve global public health through their rigorous and imaginative exploitation in facilitating the development of a broad range of novel vaccines.
We welcome the submission of Original Research, Reviews and Mini-Reviews covering, but not limited to, the following topics:
1. Reverse Vaccinology: past, current and future contributions to the research and development of vaccines.
2. The impact of complete genome sequencing on the molecular epidemiology of pathogens.
3. Interrogation of host immune responses to vaccines using high throughput RNA sequencing.
4. Technologies for antigen discovery.
5. Technologies for epitope mapping and prediction.
6. Computational simulation of immune responses.
7. Modelling antigen-antigen receptor interactions.
8. Utility of reverse vaccinology for preventing infectious diseases.
9. Utility of reverse vaccinology for preventing non-infections diseases.
10. Neoantigens for cancer vaccines.
Keywords: Reverse vaccinology, Vaccines, WGS, Epitope mapping, Antigen, Antigen receptor
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
