The World Health Organization has published a list of germs that should be addressed in future vaccines. In a report published this week, WHO scientists have identified 17 widely common pathogens most in need of new or improved vaccines, including influenza, HIV, norovirus and Staphylococcus aureus bacteria.

Vaccines have long been one of humanity’s most important public health achievements, helping to control or even eradicate dreaded diseases such as smallpox, polio and, more recently, Covid-19. But we still don’t have vaccines for many widespread diseases, while some current vaccines are only modestly effective against the target germ, such as the seasonal flu vaccine. However, there is a limited amount of time and resources that can be devoted to vaccine development, so researchers at the World Health Organization have compiled a list of priority germs that especially need to be curtailed.

The researchers first consulted with local and international experts to establish criteria for their selections. These included factors such as the annual deaths of children under five caused by a disease or the degree of resistance of a germ to drugs (some of the most worrying bacteria are often resistant to first-line antibiotics). They then cross-referenced these criteria with regional data to identify the ten diseases without effective vaccines that most affect a particular part of the world. These regional lists were eventually combined to form a global list of 17 pathogens that deserve the most attention in vaccine development. The researchers’ work, which details the creation of the list, was published Monday in the newspaper eBioMedicine.

“Too often, global decisions about new vaccines have been driven solely by return on investment, rather than the number of lives that could be saved in the most vulnerable communities,” said Kate O’Brien, Director of the Department of Immunization. , Vaccines and Biological Products. at the WHO, in a statement of the agency. “This study uses extensive experience and regional data to evaluate vaccines that would not only significantly reduce diseases that greatly affect communities today, but also reduce the medical costs faced by families and health systems.”

In particular, five germs were identified as priorities for vaccination in all WHO regions: tuberculosis mycobacteria (the cause of tuberculosis), HIV-1 (the main cause of HIV in most of the world), Klebsiella pneumoniae, S. aureusand extraintestinal pathogens. Escherichia coli. The remaining pathogens were group A streptococci, hepatitis C virus, cytomegalovirus, Leishmania parasites, not typhoid Salmonella bacteria, norovirus, Plasmodium falciparum (malaria), which causes diarrhea Shigella bacteria, dengue virus, group B streptococci, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The three deadliest diseases on the list, HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, are estimated to kill 2.5 million people worldwide annually.

Some of these germs already have current vaccines, such as tuberculosis and influenza, but these only partially protect and/or need to be constantly updated in the case of seasonal flu. Some germs have new or improved vaccines that are about to be approved or widely introduced, such as dengue or RSV. Other germs have vaccines that show promise in early research, but are still far from clear winners, such as Shigella or norovirus, while others need much more research to develop viable candidates, such as hepatitis C, HIV-1 and K. pneumonia.

The WHO list is a small part of its broader goal to substantially improve people’s access to vaccination overall by 2030, an effort known as Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030). And researchers hope their findings can guide and refine research and development of vaccine programs, both locally and globally.

“As a community, we can and must address these challenges together and quickly to fully realize the benefits and enable sustainable impact of existing and future vaccines,” they wrote in the document. “By heeding these calls to action, we can move towards the IA2030 vision of ‘A world in which everyone, everywhere and at all ages, fully benefits from immunization to improve health and well-being’” .