The quality and performances of vaccines have improved a lot since the pioneer work of Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur in the 18th and 19th century respectively. Industrial production of classical vaccines based on modified-live or inactivated pathogen agents was initiated in the second half of the 20th century. In 1973, the cloning of a foreign DNA fragment into a bacteria plasmid using restriction enzyme was the start of the rapidly evolving genetic engineering area which led to the modern biotechnology. Thirteen years later (1986), the first 'biotech vaccine' was licensed against human hepatitis B; it was a subunit vaccine produced in yeast and it replaced the first generation vaccine made from plasma of infected patients. In the veterinary field, a vaccinia-vectored vaccine was first licensed in 1994, enclosed into a bait to vaccinate wildlife against rabies. Since then, many new biotech vaccines have been developed, especially for veterinary applications, the most numerous ones being in the poultry sector.
展开▼
