The Old and the New: successful vaccines of the 20th century and approaches to making vaccines for the important diseases of the 21st century

Overall, the success of developing vaccines against acute diseases in the 20th century has laid the groundwork for vaccine development for chronic diseases in the 21st century. It is clear that we are still identifying the appropriate immunogens for inclusion in vaccines for chronic diseases and once identified our progress in enhancing the immune response is crucial for controlling these conditions either as prophylactic or therapeutic vaccines. We now enter a second 'golden age' of vaccinology in the enhanced understanding of common diseases, vaccine development against chronic noninfectious diseases, and in better integrating advances in biology, genomics, immunology, molecular biology, and virology.