Will therapeutic vaccines, which have had setbacks, fulfil their promise?

Therapeutic vaccines have faced numerous setbacks in recent years. The only three vaccines to reach the market so far have had insignificant sales and have, so far, failed to gain approval in the critical US market. Meanwhile, numerous high-profile pipeline failures and the lack of any new product launches in three years have seriously dampened investor enthusiasm.

However, according to a new report from independent market analyst Datamonitor, the fortunes of the industry could be set for a major change. A new wave of "off-the-shelf" generalized vaccines driven by genomic advances, promise to remedy the commercial drawbacks of early personalized vaccines. Moreover, as clinical experience mounts, new antigen delivery technologies appear and combination vaccines gain favor, the prospect of new non-toxic therapies for cancer and HIV gets closer to being reality, it says.

Cancer vaccines dominate the pipeline