Pierre A Morgon
The vaccine segment is anticipated to be one of the fastest growing one of the healthcare industry and several leading firms have stepped up vaccine investments in recent years. Unlike therapeutic agents, vaccines are administered to healthy individuals only once or very infrequently during a life time. Vaccines generate well-documented positive externalities, yet their poor awareness and acceptability among vaccine end-users may contribute to resurgence of transmissible diseases and consequently trigger governmental interventions such as mandating vaccination. In addition to technical and clinical development per the highest quality standards, bringing new vaccines to market requires carefully orchestrated programs targeting the multiple types of stakeholders along the entire value chain and addressing their respective purchasing behavioral drivers. Against a backdrop of anti-vaccination buzz and vaccine fatigue, successful global launch and sustainable usage of a vaccine requires the development of a multi-pronged strategy addressing all aspects in relation to acceptability (e.g. the motivation to immunize despite the quasidisappearance of the disease), accessibility (e.g. supply chain services), availability (e.g. mechanisms ensuring reliability of supply) and affordability (e.g. tiered pricing policy taking country differences in per capita income into account). Leveraging novel technological advances can positively influence the ability to activate these levers successfully. A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and to further recognize and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that agent that it may encounter in the future. Vaccines can be prophylactic (to prevent or ameliorate the effects of a future infection by a natural or “wild” pathogen), or therapeutic (to fight a disease that has already occurred, such as cancer). The administration of vaccines is called vaccination. Vac
cination is the most effective method of preventing infectious diseases; widespread immunity due to vaccination is largely responsible for the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the restriction of diseases such as polio, measles, and tetanus from much of the world. The effectiveness of vaccination has been widely studied and verified; for example, vaccines that have proven effective include the influenza vaccine, the HPV vaccine, and the chicken pox vaccine. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that licensed vaccines are currently available for twenty-five different preventable infections. The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from Variolae vaccinae (smallpox of the cow), the term devised by Edward Jenner (who both developed the concept of vaccines and created the first vaccine) to denote cowpox. He used the phrase in 1798 for the long title of his Inquiry into the Variolae vaccinae Known as the Cow Pox, in which he described the protective effect of cowpox against smallpox. In 1881, to honor Jenner, Louis Pasteur proposed that the terms should be extended to cover the new protective inoculations then being developed.