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VACCINES

The fix is in

Nature Microbiology volume 5, pages 393–394 (2020)Cite this article

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Resistance to antibiotics is a hot topic in microbiology, but there is much less coverage on resistance to vaccines. The associated risk to disease control has potentially devastating implications, but advances are being made towards smarter vaccine design that reduces the risk of antibiotic-resistant disease.

Vaccines against Streptococcus pneumoniae (the pneumococcus) have significantly reduced the global disease burden since the start of this century, but circulating pathogen populations are evolving to evade these vaccines, threatening their future efficacy1. Pneumococcal populations are diverse and dynamic, comprising multiple strains which change in prevalence over time due to inter-strain competition and pressure from human immunity2. Current vaccines target the polysaccharide capsule on the cell surface but are limited to protecting against a subset of capsule structures (serotypes), so the occurrence of strains that are insusceptible to vaccine-induced immunity is inevitable, and predicting how a population will respond to vaccine introduction is very challenging. Writing in Nature Microbiology, Colijn, Corander and Croucher present an approach that combines epidemiological data, population genomics and evolutionary modelling to forecast population strain composition and inform the design of vaccines that will guide the evolution of the pathogen population towards reduced virulence and reduced antibiotic-resistant disease3.

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Fig. 1: Dynamics of a multi-strain response to vaccine selection.

References

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  1. Parasites and Microbes, Wellcome Sanger Institute, Hinxton, UK

    Stephen Bentley

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  1. Stephen Bentley
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Correspondence to Stephen Bentley.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Bentley, S. The fix is in. Nat Microbiol 5, 393–394 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-020-0677-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-020-0677-1

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