Rappuoli R
IRIS, Chiron S.p.A., Via Fiorentina 1, 53100, Siena, Italy.
Curr Opin Microbiol. 2000 Oct;3(5):445-50. doi: 10.1016/s1369-5274(00)00119-3.
Biochemical, serological and microbiological methods have been used to dissect pathogens and identify the components useful for vaccine development. Although successful in many cases, this approach is time-consuming and fails when the pathogens cannot be cultivated in vitro, or when the most abundant antigens are variable in sequence. Now genomic approaches allow prediction of all antigens, independent of their abundance and immunogenicity during infection, without the need to grow the pathogen in vitro. This allows vaccine development using non-conventional antigens and exploiting non-conventional arms of the immune system. Many vaccines impossible to develop so far will become a reality. Since the process of vaccine discovery starts in silico using the genetic information rather than the pathogen itself, this novel process can be named reverse vaccinology.
生物化学、血清学和微生物学方法已被用于剖析病原体，并鉴定对疫苗开发有用的成分。尽管在许多情况下取得了成功，但这种方法耗时较长，并且当病原体无法在体外培养时，或者当最丰富的抗原序列可变时，该方法就会失效。如今，基因组学方法能够预测所有抗原，而不考虑其在感染期间的丰度和免疫原性，且无需在体外培养病原体。这使得利用非常规抗原并开发免疫系统的非常规分支来研制疫苗成为可能。许多迄今为止无法研制的疫苗将成为现实。由于疫苗发现过程始于利用遗传信息而非病原体本身进行的计算机模拟，因此这一全新过程可被称为反向疫苗学。
