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Audio Interview

Recent research in vaccine development

Published on October 30, 2025   10 min

A selection of talks on Microbiology

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Interviewer: Joining us today is Dr. Adam Cunningham, Professor of Functional Immunity in the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the University of Birmingham, and director of the BactiVac Network, which aims to advance vaccine development against global bacterial infections. Dr. Cunningham has kindly joined us today to discuss recent advancements in bacterial vaccine development. Dr. Cunningham, thank you so much for your time today. Prof. Cunningham: Thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation. To set the scene before we dive into recent advancements in bacterial vaccine development, it might be helpful to first remind ourselves what is a vaccine, and what do we want from a successful vaccine. Prof. Cunningham: A vaccine is part of a pathogen which is administered to help induce a protective immune response that helps limit the risk of disease and the serious consequences of a particular disease. What we really want from a vaccine is fundamentally, it's got to be safe, because in most circumstances most people who take a vaccine will probably not encounter the pathogen but safety becomes paramount. Second to that, we want it to induce a protective response, and we want it to induce that protective response lasting for typically years. If we look at pretty much all vaccines after one or more doses, they definitely induce protection for decades, and we can see this in the near eradication of really serious infections in the context of bacteria. We can see that now cases of tetanus or diphtheria are minimal in places where vaccine uptake is very high. Interviewer: What are some of the important distinctions

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