READ

Behind the vaccines: How science is building immunity

Vaccines are one of the most successful public health measures of all time, saving millions of lives every year. But how are they made?
Dr Laura Masters
Dr Laura Masters
Behind the vaccines: How science is building immunity
Image credit: University of Queensland

Vaccines are amazing. They help your body develop immunity against dangerous and deadly diseases without being exposed to them.

The first vaccine was for protection against smallpox. In 1796, British doctor Edward Jenner used cowpox to develop immunity against smallpox.

In fact, this pioneering discovery is how the field of vaccinology got its name. ‘Vacca’ means ‘cow’ in Latin.

How are vaccines made?

Vaccines work by imitating infection without causing illness.

One of the simplest ways to create a vaccine is to take the entire pathogen and damage it. Weakening a pathogen so it grows poorly is called attenuation.

Attenuated vaccines introduce a weaker form of the virus or bacteria into the body. Examples include measles, mumps and rubella vaccines.

These pathogens are too weak to make you sick, but your immune system still learns to recognise it to fight it in the future.

The immune response attenuated vaccines generate is strong and can last for years. For some vaccines, immunity can fade over time, and you may need a booster. Boosters bump up your immunity and make sure your body remains ready to fight infection.

Another way to make a vaccine is to take part of the pathogen as a vaccine target.

When you are infected with a pathogen, your immune system sees it in small pieces instead of as a whole. These small pieces are called antigens.

Not all antigens stimulate a helpful immune response, so researchers need to choose carefully. They might select one or a few of these antigens to create a new vaccine.

View Larger

Building a vaccine takes plenty of bunny suits and shiny vats – and also millions of dollars and years of research.

Image credit: University of Queensland
Building a vaccine takes plenty of bunny suits and shiny vats – and also millions of dollars and years of research.

Other important elements of vaccines are preservatives and adjuvants.

Preservatives prevent vaccines from becoming contaminated with harmful bacteria or fungi. Adjuvants boost the immune response to produce more antibodies and longer-lasting immunity.

This makes the vaccine more effective and protection last longer.

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3

Once a new vaccine has been made, it’s tested rigorously before it’s available to the public. This testing often involves trials in animals.

The first round of human tests have very small participant numbers and focus on safety.

If it passes this test, more trials using larger numbers of people occur. This is where researchers can see how effective the vaccine is in preventing infection, and they can keep an eye out for side effects.

If the vaccine is safe and effective, then there are regulatory hurdles to clear. In Australia, all new vaccines must be reviewed and approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

From start to finish, the process of making a vaccine can take up to 10 years or more.

What if we can’t wait?

Can we fast-track a vaccine? Emerging infectious diseases like the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus need a rapid response.

The Vaccine Pipeline

Video credit: The University of Queensland
The Vaccine Pipeline

Around the world, networks of brilliant scientists have been developing cutting-edge approaches to vaccine design. These are advanced through rapid response vaccine pipelines.

With vaccines in development at the CSIRO and the University of Queensland, Australian scientists look set to be a crucial part of the solution.

Dr Laura Masters
About the author
Dr Laura Masters
Laura is research microbiologist with an interest in viruses, particularly those that are important in pregnancy and early life. She's always been fascinated by science, and willing to share her passion with anyone who will listen.
View articles
Laura is research microbiologist with an interest in viruses, particularly those that are important in pregnancy and early life. She's always been fascinated by science, and willing to share her passion with anyone who will listen.
View articles

NEXT ARTICLE

We've got chemistry, let's take it to the next level!

Get the latest WA science news delivered to your inbox, every fortnight.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Republish

Creative Commons Logo

Republishing our content

We want our stories to be shared and seen by as many people as possible.

Therefore, unless it says otherwise, copyright on the stories on Particle belongs to Scitech and they are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This allows you to republish our articles online or in print for free. You just need to credit us and link to us, and you can’t edit our material or sell it separately.

Using the ‘republish’ button on our website is the easiest way to meet our guidelines.

Guidelines

You cannot edit the article.

When republishing, you have to credit our authors, ideally in the byline. You have to credit Particle with a link back to the original publication on Particle.

If you’re republishing online, you must use our pageview counter, link to us and include links from our story. Our page view counter is a small pixel-ping (invisible to the eye) that allows us to know when our content is republished. It’s a condition of our guidelines that you include our counter. If you use the ‘republish’ then you’ll capture our page counter.

If you’re republishing in print, please email us to let us so we know about it (we get very proud to see our work republished) and you must include the Particle logo next to the credits. Download logo here.

If you wish to republish all our stories, please contact us directly to discuss this opportunity.

Images

Most of the images used on Particle are copyright of the photographer who made them.

It is your responsibility to confirm that you’re licensed to republish images in our articles.

Video

All Particle videos can be accessed through YouTube under the Standard YouTube Licence.

The Standard YouTube licence

  1. This licence is ‘All Rights Reserved’, granting provisions for YouTube to display the content, and YouTube’s visitors to stream the content. This means that the content may be streamed from YouTube but specifically forbids downloading, adaptation, and redistribution, except where otherwise licensed. When uploading your content to YouTube it will automatically use the Standard YouTube licence. You can check this by clicking on Advanced Settings and looking at the dropdown box ‘License and rights ownership’.
  2. When a user is uploading a video he has license options that he can choose from. The first option is “standard YouTube License” which means that you grant the broadcasting rights to YouTube. This essentially means that your video can only be accessed from YouTube for watching purpose and cannot be reproduced or distributed in any other form without your consent.

Contact

For more information about using our content, email us: particle@scitech.org.au

Copy this HTML into your CMS
Press Ctrl+C to copy