Introduction: immunopathology of unresolved tropical diseases

Excerpt

The present issue of Seminars in Immunopathology is motivated by the fact that the diseases of poverty, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs; [1]) still represent the major burden of ill health in tropical and subtropical areas, particularly in the low- and middle-income countries. The burden of disease as measured by disability adjusted life years (DALYs) of this group of communicable diseases is still massive, as we still lose more than 250 million health life years per year despite major advances made in global public health over the past decades [2]. While the advances in understanding host-pathogen relationships greatly benefited from the well-documented successes in the fields of genomics, proteomics, lipidomics, glycosomics, and the likes, the insight in the pathogen-host crosstalk increases, but we still lack effective vaccines against diseases of poverty and NTDs, and the pipelines for R&D of respective new drugs and treatments are weak, and few new chemical entities are on the horizon. Is there a way forward? …