India will soon launch three important vaccines in the next two to three years. The vaccines are for HIV, rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease and cervical cancer. The DNA vaccines have atremendous potential in the country and so are the edible plant vaccines. Studies are on to bring out vaccines from edible plants to prevent diseases like diabetes, auto immune diseases, cancer and asthma.

At the fifth plenary session of the 90th Indian Science Congress a panel of medical-scientists dealt with the "Future trends in medicine and immunisation". Addressing the session, N K Ganguly, director, Indian Council of Medical Research said that research on the three vaccines for the critical diseases was under way and the project was in the technology transfer stage where pharma companies were to be identified for production. An advertisement to this effect will be soon released and a panel of a Parliamentary Committee, Social Science set-up and NGO network were already in place and the there would be significant improvement in the health care delivery system in the within the next five years.

For the development of the vaccine for HIV, where almost 90 percent of the research was complete, ICMR has a tripartite agreement with National AIDS Control Organisation NACO, Ministry of health and family welfare and the International AIDS Agency.

In the case of rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease vaccine, 13 centres in the country were identified to study the 6 different strains ofStreptoccocal' prevalent in the population in India. "The tests on mice have provided encouraging results and next phase of trials is on humans would be conducted at all the 13 centres, " said Ganguly.

The cause of cervical cancer was due to the presence of small double DNA virus that affects the genital tract. The highest incidence of the disease is in the south India and the high risk structure present in the cases is referred to as 'E6 Oncoprotein. "The vaccine called HPV 16 (NCI) is the only vaccine in the world which has a cent percent success rate to treat the disease. The proposed trails in India re expected to take place in Mumbai, New Delhi and Chennai, informed Ganguly.

Prof. MK Bhan from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, dealt with the challenges in immunisation in developing countries. According to him three million children world wide have been saved from diseases with the advent of advanced vaccines. Around 12 million children die from infectious diseases globally every year. Out of this one-third of the cases are fatal due to the non-availability of the vaccine and two-thirds cases succumb to the disease due to unsatisfactory results of the vaccines.

Prof. Bhan is of the view that unless vaccines provided with simple administering procedures. Ease of use will popularise the vaccine. "India will need simple, less strenuous, long lasting immunity vaccines.."

One of the practical uses of DNA vaccines that multiples vaccines can be given in a single shot. There are already five DNA vaccines in the clinical trails stage.

Edible plant vaccines are much cost-effective as it could be either administered orally, or skin patchesand intranasal.

Dr. SS Agarwal, director, ACTREC said that the medicine of tomorrow would be 'Molecular Medicine where its application in predictive medicine, designer drugs, gene therapy and cell therapy/ tissue engineering will be the thrust of medical research.