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0:00
My name is
Professor Gordon Dougan.
And I work at the Wellcome
Trust Sanger Institute
at the University of Cambridge
in Cambridge, England.
I am currently head of pathogen
research at the Sanger.
But for many years,
I worked in industry.
During that time, I was
involved in vaccine discovery,
development, and production.
0:23
Today, I'm going to talk
to you about how I believe
vaccines fit into the modern world.
To achieve that, we'll start off
by talking about what vaccines are.
We'll then talk about how vaccines
are made and what they're made of.
I'll talk to you a little
bit about how they work.
But then I'll go through a number of
specific examples of real vaccines.
We'll start off with vaccines
which are well established.
And many of them, you will
have heard of and might
even have received yourself.
We'll talk about vaccines, which are
in the development phase, which are
being prepared for sale,
but they're not quite there
yet, and might cover new diseases.
And I'll finish off by talking
about emerging technologies
and how these technologies might
transform vaccines in the future.
I feel that we're in a very exciting
period for vaccine research.
We call this field the area
of vaccinology at the moment.
And I'll try and get across
to you during this lecture
why I feel there are so many
opportunities in the field.
1:26
What are vaccines?
Vaccines are used to prevent
disease by stimulating immunity.
But they do this
without causing disease.
They are normally made from either
live attenuated microorganisms
or their nonliving components.
By attenuated, we mean live
organisms that have been modified,
so that they do not cause disease.
But they can still
stimulate immunity.
Now, vaccines are used
prophylactically in healthy people.
That means, we use in
before people actually
get ill, unlike normal drugs.
Now, vaccines can
theoretically be used
therapeutically to treat disease.
But so far, we don't have any
licensed therapeutic vaccines.
Molecular sciences are
revolutionizing our understanding
of infection and immunity.
And this is triggering a golden
age of vaccine development.
We've had more new vaccines
made in the last 10 to 15 years
than in the previous 100.
A good example is the new
vaccine against papilloma
or cervical cancer.
So the important
point really here is
that vaccines are used to prevent
disease before disease starts.
And this distinguishes
them from drugs.
