Access

News and Views

Nature 441, 161 (11 May 2006) | doi:10.1038/441161a; Published online 10 May 2006

Vaccines: Engineering immune evasion

John R. Mascola1

Top

One obstacle to realizing the promise of viral vectors for vaccine delivery is pre-existing immunity to such vectors. An adroit application of structure-based design points to a way around that problem.

There are still no vaccines against such devastating and widespread diseases as malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS. Because the traditional approach of live-attenuated vaccination is not feasible for most diseases, scientists have turned to molecularly engineered viruses that contain pathogen-specific gene inserts.