Historical Advances in Structural and Molecular Biology and How They Impacted Vaccine Development

Vaccines are among the greatest tools for prevention and control of disease. They have eliminated small-pox from the planet, decreased morbidity and mortality for major infectious diseases like polio, measles, mumps, and rubella, significantly blunted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and prevented viral induced cancers such as cervical cancer caused by human papillomavirus. Recent technological advances, in genomics, structural biology, and human immunology have transformed vaccine develop-ment, enabling new technologies such as mRNA vaccines to greatly accelerate development of new and improved vaccines. In this review, we briefly highlight the history of vaccine development, and provide examples of where advances in genomics and structural biology, paved the way for development of vac-cines for bacterial and viral diseases.(c) 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.