Broadly protective anti-viral vaccines

^{(Image by Angelo Esslinger from Pixabay)}

The rapid development of broadly protective anti-viral vaccines has been considered an intervention strategy of primary importance to reduce the spread of viruses – both endemic viruses like influenza, representing a health and economic burden, and new or emerging viruses with pandemic potential. Platforms should be developed to allow producing broadly protective vaccines either directly or after further adaptation to the newly emerged pandemic virus.

Such vaccines should provide protection against several members of the same virus family. Influenza and coronaviruses are not the only pathogens that could be targeted by a universal vaccine approach. There are several other virus families that harbour viruses with pandemic potential, such as HIV, Hepatitis, yellow fever, Ebola, Zika, Dengue, meningitis. Furthermore, universal vaccines against hepatitis C and HIV are still unavailable.

To achieve this goal, there is an urgent need for more research on understanding correlates of broad protection within these virus families, as well as studies exploring vaccine platforms that are designed to induce such protective responses. Research is also ongoing on the opportunities of using existing vaccines against non-related pathogens, like BCG, Polio- or MMR vaccine, to boost innate immunity as a measure to mitigate the outcome of a pandemic virus infection.

This new cross-journal thematic series welcomes research, reviews, methodology articles and short reports exploring recent developments and promising new research avenues for the development of broadly protective anti-viral vaccines, as well as hurdles and limitations. Studies considering aspects of health economics and health services are also in scope in this series, including research funding, international cooperation, and global investment for better pandemic preparedness.

The following journals are accepting submissions to the series:

Virology Journal

One Health Outlook

Manuscripts should be formatted according to the individual journals instructions for authors and submitted via the online submission system. Please indicate clearly in the title page that the manuscript is to be considered for the thematic series ‘Broadly protective anti-viral vaccines’. 

Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed independently by the respective journal. Accepted articles will be published online on a continuous basis.