Vaccine

A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters.

What are Vaccines?

There are several diseases like Diphtheria, whooping cough (pertussis), measles, mumps, Yellow fever, small pox and German measles (rubella) that are unfamiliar to many these days.

Vaccine History

Vaccine Schedule

Vaccine Effectiveness

Vaccine Production

Vaccine Excipients

Vaccine Delivery

Vaccine Immunity

Hib Immunization

History of Vaccination

How are Vaccines Stored?

What are the Different Types of Vaccines?

See more featured articles »

What is a Subunit Vaccine?

What is an Inactivated Vaccine?

What is a Live-Attenuated Vaccine?

What is a Toxoid Vaccine?

What is an RNA Vaccine?

What is a DNA Vaccine?

What are Adenovirus-Based Vaccines?

What is a Non-Replicating Vaccine?

What is a VLP Vaccine?

What are Nanoparticle-Based Vaccines?

The Future of Vaccines

Latest Vaccine News and Research

Study receives $15 million CDC award to continue research on COVID-19 immunity, vaccine effectiveness

A University of Arizona Health Sciences study of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness and immunity among frontline workers has received a $15 million award from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to continue the current research for another year and expand to include children and focus on underserved populations.

23 Jul 2021

Global economic recovery at risk due to COVID-19 vaccine inequity

New Global Dashboard on COVID-19 Vaccine Equity finds low-income countries would add $38 billion to their GDP forecast for 2021 if they had the same vaccination rate as high-income countries. Global economic recovery at risk if vaccines are not equitably manufactured, scaled up and distributed.

23 Jul 2021

Research uncovers an unexpected role for immune T cells in protection against malaria

Advanced technologies have been used to solve a long-standing mystery about why some people develop serious illness when they are infected with the malaria parasite, while others carry the infection asymptomatically.

23 Jul 2021

Advantages and challenges of intranasal vaccines to fight against COVID-19 infections

There are many reasons that an intranasal vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus would be helpful in the fight against COVID-19 infections, University of Alabama at Birmingham immunologists Fran Lund, Ph.D., and Troy Randall, Ph.D., write in a viewpoint article in the journal Science.

23 Jul 2021

Researchers use mass spectrometry to study immunogenic SARS-CoV-2 epitopes

A new study has been published on the bioRxiv* preprint server, which has used MS to identify T cell epitopes of SARS-CoV-2 conserved protein, i.e., the membrane glycol protein (MGP) and the non-structure protein-13 (NSP13).

23 Jul 2021

Clinical trials during a pandemic – lessons from COVID-19

In this interview, Dr. Benedicte Roquebert, Dr. Stephanie Haim-Boukobza and Dr. Souad Mehlal discuss how COVID-19 has resulted in new ways to think about clinical trials during a pandemic.

From Cerba Research 23 Jul 2021

CDC monitoring over 200 individuals possibly exposed to monkeypox

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is monitoring over 200 people who may have been exposed to the monkeypox virus.

22 Jul 2021

First dose of Pfizer-BioNTech or Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines has strong protective effect against COVID-19 in older adults

A new study estimates vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 mortality in England using the RDD approach.

22 Jul 2021

Efficacy of mRNA vaccine-induced memory B cells against SARS-CoV-2 variants

A new study characterizes the functional humoral immunity post-COVID-19 mRNA-based vaccination.

22 Jul 2021

Cell-analysis method could pave the way for new vaccine strategies against tuberculosis

A new method that analyzes how individual immune cells react to the bacteria that cause tuberculosis could pave the way for new vaccine strategies against this deadly disease, and provide insights into fighting other infectious diseases around the world.

22 Jul 2021

Llama ‘nanobodies’ have the potential to outwit human cytomegalovirus

Scientists have developed a 'nanobody' - a small fragment of a llama antibody - that is capable of chasing out human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) as it hides away from the immune system.

22 Jul 2021

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Delta changes the covid conversation

The resurgence of covid cases in the U.S. — largely attributable to the much more contagious delta variant — has given policymakers the jitters.

22 Jul 2021

Study in France suggests high efficacy of mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern

A nationwide case-control study conducted in France has assessed the efficacy of mRNA-based coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines against original severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its variants, including B.1.1.7, B.1.351, and P1.

22 Jul 2021

Pfizer vaccine and isolation independently associated with reduced household transmission of SARS-CoV-2

Israel was among the leading proponents of COVID-19 vaccination as the way out of the current worldwide restrictions on social and economic interactions and activity. A new study, recently released as a preprint on the medRxiv* server, reports on the effects of the large-scale vaccination campaigns carried out in this country, relating to successful control of SARS-CoV-2 spread within households.

22 Jul 2021

Finding most promising targets for pan-coronavirus drugs

Safe and effective vaccines offer hope for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the possible emergence of vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants, as well as novel coronaviruses, make finding treatments that work against all coronaviruses as important as ever.

22 Jul 2021