This article was taken from the May 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
The big question: What vaccines will we invent in the next decade?
Inventor, the rotavirus vaccine
"There is no doubt that there will be a serogroup B meningococcal vaccine; once we have that, we can talk about eliminating meningitis. Also, there is a lot of promise in the malaria vaccine being developed by GlaxoSmithKline. I'm going to predict, however, that we will not have an HIV vaccine within ten years."
CEO, International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI)
"We will likely see a universal flu vaccine within ten years; one that's effective against all strains of seasonal influenza and would not have to be produced anew each year, as it is today. Also, given recent breakthroughs in HIV research, we will probably have HIV vaccine candidates in advanced stages of clinical development within the decade."
Director, WHO Initiative for Vaccine Research
"In order for a new vaccine to become available during the next decade, it should already be in the discovery process. My personal shortlist includes a malaria vaccine which protects more than 60 per cent of children against severe disease, a vaccine against addiction, a vaccine made in plants and a vaccine administered by aerosol."
CEO, GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines
"No health intervention is as powerful and cost-effective as vaccination, yet its potential remains untapped. Research points to a new generation of vaccines to protect against malaria, control chronic infections, and fight cancer -- by harnessing our immune systems to recognise and attack tumours. The next chapter in the vaccines story is a promising one."
Honorary director, MRC Human Immunology Unit
"I would like to say that we will invent an Aids vaccine in the next ten years but taking it through the necessary testing, manufacturing and licensing will take a further five to ten years.
There is promise that a better TB vaccine will be in a more advanced position. A flu vaccine that could counter a new pandemic is also a realistic possibility."
Director, Jenner Institute for Vaccines, Oxford University
"The most exciting vaccine will be against Alzheimer's -- the market for that is enormous. There's a 20 to 30 per cent chance it will get licensed in ten years. There will probably also be an anti-nicotine vaccine within ten years. And at the conceptual stage are vaccines that people can take in middle age, to prevent, rather than cure, specific cancers."
Chief clinician, Cancer Research UK
"We now know how to release the power of the immune system to recognise cancers much better than before, so we will see more vaccines that get the body's immune system to target abnormalities in a patient's cancer. The vaccines with most work behind them at the moment are against bowel and prostate cancer, and potentially lung cancer."