Journal of Vaccines & Vaccination

Past, present, and augmentation of current vaccines for select category A/B pathogens

International Conference & Exhibition on Vaccines & Vaccination

22-24 Nov 2011 Philadelphia Airport Marriott, USA

Kei Amemiya

Keynote: J Vaccines Vaccin

Abstract:

E vents in the last several decades have brought into focus the need for preventive countermeasures against the possible exposure to biological agents that impact not only the physical state of the individual but imparts a lasting psychological fear in the general population. More recent events have demonstrated how easily one biological agent was used to aff ect our lives and has been part of an initiative to re-examine what type of countermeasures can best be used to protect us aft er exposure to a biological agent. With the possibility of the appearance of a newly genetically engineered biological agent or unexpected spread of an obscure emerging pa tho- gen, it may take a multidisciplinary approach to control the immediate and long-term consequences of the pathogen. Whether it i s important to emphasize the development of prophylactic countermeasures, postexposure therapeutics, new diagnostic identifi cation procedures or rely on all three avenues for better protection against biological agents might be debatable; nevertheless, proph ylaxis vaccination has been successfully used against many infectious diseases acquired by humans. We will present the current status of vaccines against select Category A/B bacterial pathogens ( Bacillus anthracis, Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, Burkholderia mallei, and B. pseudomallei ), what type of platforms and adjuvants are being used, what possible future candidate vaccines are be- ing considered, and what animal models are being used to measure effi cacy of the vaccine. In addition, because of an increase in the understanding of the host response to infectious biological agents, specifi cally how the innate immune response can directly aff ect the acquired immune response, we can use this information to augment the immune response of the host to candidate vaccines. Some examples of how stimulation of the innate immune response to the vaccine increases their effi cacy will be presented

Biography :

Dr. Amemiya obtained his B.S. and M.S. at Long Beach State University in Microbiology. He received his doctoral degree at Ruger s University in Microbiology in 1973. He went to Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, to do post-graduate studies in t he cell-cycle of the diphasic bacterium Caulobacter crecentus and studied gene regulation during development in the laboratory of Lucy Shapiro. Later he went to the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke in 1986, where he examined gene regulation in JC virus, which is a human polyomavirus associated with the demyelinating disease progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy in im mune suppressed patients. In 1999, he went to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Bacteriology Division , where he has been involved in vaccine development and the immune response to candidate vaccines of glanders and plague. His primary interest has been with adjuvants and the innate immune response to vaccines in animal models