Vaccine design at atomic level

Scientists from Novartis Italy-based facilities have reported in this month on Science Translational Medicine how they have probed an even deeper scale in the design of a new vaccine. Searching for a useful vaccine against meningococcus B, they combined conventional immunogen design, genomics and atomic structural information that led to a novel level of design refinement. Meningococcus is a well-known causal agent to meningitis, a life-threatening infection. Although there exists vaccines for most strains of meningococcus, serotype B (composed of more than 300 strains) has no such vaccine. Although this new vaccine is far from final development stage, this new accomplishment represents a further advance in the general process of vaccine development. In the future, new and safer vaccines may be designed this way. Read more: http://bit.ly/oNMnbV and http://bit.ly/qPl4Fh