Systems biology approaches to new vaccine development

The current 'isolate, inactivate, inject' vaccine development strategy has served the field of vaccinology well, and such empirical vaccine candidate development has even led to the eradication of smallpox. However, such an approach suffers from limitations, and as an empirical approach, does not fully utilize our knowledge of immunology and genetics. A more complete understanding of the biological processes culminating in disease resistance is needed. The advent of high-dimensional assay technology and 'systems biology' along with a vaccinomics approach [1,2] is spawning a new era in the science of vaccine development. Here we review recent developments in systems biology and strategies for applying this approach and its resulting data to expand our knowledge base and drive directed development of new vaccines. We also provide applied examples and point out new directions for the field in order to illustrate the power of systems biology.