Vaccines & Vaccination

Biography

Biography: Giulio Filippo Tarro

Abstract

Misconceptions and misinformation pose barriers to vaccinations. For instance a report linking the measles vaccine to autism, the paper was later retracted but it was used by ill informed peers and anti-vaccine groups. Research is badly needed to develop strategies to communicate the importance of vaccinations to uncertain parents. The 2008 San Diego measles outbreaks cost over 10.000 dollars for each infection in comparisons to the total cost to contain the outbreak (approximately 124.000 dollars). Even if there are rare cases of vaccine damage, the research to facilitate vaccination must be done to prevent diseases. HBV virus, responsible for hepatitis-B infection, is able to prevent 50% of all liver cancers. Human Papilloma Viruses (HPV) has been correlated with the cervical cancer (genotypes 16 and 18 particularly oncogenic in humans): The USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006 released the first vaccine against HPV. Long years of research where required for busting the new system to fight cancer. Research is going to obtain the complete sequence by proteomics approaches, in order to achieve adequate antigen preparations that might be used to generate assays for a specific anticancer vaccine. Finally, the ability of the immune system to recognize a tumor-associated antigen, thus enabling development of a vaccine approach for therapeutic application, represents a main target of this field of research.