Description

Vaccines are the pharmaceutical products that offer the best cost‐benefit ratio in the prevention or treatment of diseases. In that a vaccine is a pharmaceutical product, vaccine development and production are costly and it takes years for this to be accomplished. Several approaches have been applied to reduce the times and costs of vaccine development, mainly focusing on the selection of appropriate antigens or antigenic structures, carriers, and adjuvants. One of these approaches is the incorporation of bioinformatics methods and analyses into vaccine development. This chapter provides an overview of the application of bioinformatics strategies in vaccine design and development, supplying some successful examples of vaccines in which bioinformatics has furnished a cutting edge in their development. Reverse vaccinology, immunoinformatics, and structural vaccinology are described and addressed in the design and development of specific vaccines against infectious diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, and parasites. These include some emerging or re‐emerging infectious diseases, as well as therapeutic vaccines to fight cancer, allergies, and substance abuse, which have been facilitated and improved by using bioinformatics tools or which are under development based on bioinformatics strategies.

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