Review The Key Role of Genomics in Modern Vaccine and Drug Design for Emerging Infectious Diseases

Abstract: It can be argued that the arrival of the ‘‘genomics era’ ’ has significantly shifted the paradigm of vaccine and therapeutics development from microbiolog-ical to sequence-based approaches. Genome sequences provide a previously unattainable route to investigate the mechanisms that underpin pathogenesis. Genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, structural genomics, pro-teomics, and immunomics are being exploited to perfect the identification of targets, to design new vaccines and drugs, and to predict their effects in patients. Further-more, human genomics and related studies are providing insights into aspects of host biology that are important in infectious disease. This ever-growing body of genomic data and new genome-based approaches will play a critical role in the future to enable timely development of vaccines and therapeutics to control emerging infectious diseases. By controlling debilitating and often-lethal infectious diseases, vaccines and antibiotics have had an enormous impact on world health. Now, with the arrival of the ‘‘genomics era,’ ’ a paradigm shift is occurring in the development of vaccines—and potentially also in the development of antibiotics—that is providing fresh impetus to this field. The world is still faced with a huge burden of infection, however, by classic pathogens (e.g., typhoid, measles), recently discovered causes of disease (e.g., Helicobacter pylori and hepatitis C virus [HCV]), and emerging infectious diseases (EIDs, e.g., H1N1 swine flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus [SARS-CoV]). In addition, variant forms of previ-ously identified infectious diseases are reemerging (e.g., Streptococcus pyogenes, also known as group A streptococcus [GAS], and dengue fever), along with antibiotic-resistant forms of microbes (e.g., methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus [MRSA] and Mycobacterium tuberculosis) [1,2] (for a list of EIDs se