FORWARD LOOK AT VIRAL VACCINES - WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO NEW IMMUNOLOGIC ADJUVANT

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Abstract
The past decade has been greatly rewarding in gains in knowledge of the causation of viral infectious diseases, in the development of a variety of safe and effective live and killed virus vaccines, and in progress toward safe and effective means of increasing immunologic responses by means of adjuvants. The newly developed peanut oil adjuvant 65 shows considerable promise as an adjuvant, both in the height and the duration of antibody concentrations that are achieved and, in the margin of safety made possible by the use of substances that are only mildly inflammatory, are quickly metabolizable, and are readily removed from the tissues. It is also true that the decade has been marked by intermittent frustrations and imponderables that have arisen largely as the result of improved technology, increased insight, and chance observations in related fields; but the outcome of these factors has been beneficial in leading to vaccines of increased safety and efficacy. It can be anticipated that the coutinuing series of theoretical and practical problems that arise in vaccine development will find as rapid resolution in the future as in the past. There is abundant knowledge to suggest that a variety of chronic, degenerative, and prenatal diseases of man are of viral origin and can be brought under eventual control through diligent application of the same measures that are currently being developed for the control of the acute viral infectious diseases. It is equally worthy of note that present evidence in the study of animal cancer strongly suggests that certain malignancies of man may also be caused by viruses. If this proves true, one approach to the prevention of cancer may be immunization against the virus itself, either by stimulating antibody response in the mother or by vaccination shortly after birth, so as to provide passive antibody protection during the early postnatal period. The increasing demonstration of a unique antigen in tumors provides a basis for immunologic attack against the tumor itself through use of tumor vaccine, and thereby offers hope for treating the tumor as well as preventing its cause.