A synthetic vaccine is a

vaccine A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verified.

consisting mainly of synthetic peptides,

carbohydrate In organic chemistry, a carbohydrate () is a biomolecule consisting of carbon (C), hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) atoms, usually with a hydrogen–oxygen atom ratio of 2:1 (as in water) and thus with the empirical formula (where ''m'' may or m ...

s, or

antigen In immunology, an antigen (Ag) is a molecule or molecular structure or any foreign particulate matter or a pollen grain that can bind to a specific antibody or T-cell receptor. The presence of antigens in the body may trigger an immune respons ...

s. They are usually considered to be safer than vaccines from bacterial cultures. Creating vaccines synthetically has the ability to increase the speed of production. This is especially important in the event of a pandemic.

History

The world's first synthetic vaccine was created in 1796 from

diphtheria Diphtheria is an infection caused by the bacterium '' Corynebacterium diphtheriae''. Most infections are asymptomatic or have a mild clinical course, but in some outbreaks more than 10% of those diagnosed with the disease may die. Signs and s ...

toxin by Louis Chedid (scientist) from the

Pasteur Institute The Pasteur Institute (french: Institut Pasteur) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines ...

and

Michael Sela Michael Sela ( he, מיכאל סלע; Mieczysław Salomonowicz; 2 March 1924 – 27 May 2022) was an Israeli immunologist of Polish Jewish origin. He was the W. Garfield Weston Professor of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Re ...

from the

Weizmann Institute The Weizmann Institute of Science ( he, מכון ויצמן למדע ''Machon Vaitzman LeMada'') is a public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, 14 years before the State of Israel. It differs from other Israeli univ ...

. In 1986,

Manuel Elkin Patarroyo Manuel Elkin Patarroyo Murillo (born November 3, 1946) Fundación Príncipe de AsturiasManuel Elkin Patarroyo (Spanish). Premiados, Investigación Científica y Técnica, 1994. is a Colombian Professor of Pathology and Immunology who made the worl ...

created the SPf66, the first version of a synthetic vaccine for

Malaria Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...

. During the H1N1 outbreak in 2009, vaccines only became available in large quantities after the peak of human infections. This was a learning experience for vaccination companies.

Novartis Novartis AG is a Swiss-American multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland and Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (global research).name="novartis.com">https://www.novartis.com/research-development/research-loc ...

Vaccine and Diagnostics, among other companies, developed a synthetic approach that very rapidly generates vaccine viruses from sequence data in order to be able to administer vaccinations early in the pandemic outbreak. Philip Dormatizer, the leader of viral vaccine research at Novartis, says they have "developed a way of chemically synthesizing virus genomes and growing them in tissue culture cells". Phase I data of UB-311, a synthetic peptide vaccine targeting amyloid beta, showed that the drug was able to generate antibodies to specific amyloid beta oligomers and fibrils with no decrease in antibody levels in patients of advanced age. Results from the Phase II trial are expected in the second half of 2018.http://www.bioworld.com/content/alz-players-stand-united-new-beta-bids-also-fall

References

External links

Article on synthetic Hib vaccineWeb Health Centre: History of Vaccines
Vaccines Synthetic biology {{vaccine-stub