Introduction

Abstract

The Japanese Society for Vaccinology (JSV) is an academic organization with approximately 1000 members, who work to combat infectious disease outbreak, to develop vaccines, to look into the basic fundamentals of vaccinology, immunology, and infectious diseases, to clarify the epidemiology, and to produce vaccines. JSV has been established in 1997. Although JSV is still young scientific community in the field of a broad-range vaccinology in Japan, we believe that Japanese scientists in the field of vaccinology have contributed to combating or managing the infectious diseases and promotion of the basic research in vaccinology. Prof. M. Takahashi developed a highly attenuated varicella vaccine in the 1970s. Prof. S. Hashizume developed a highly attenuated smallpox vaccine. The development of these vaccines has contributed not only to reduce the burden of infectious diseases in our society, but also to developing the new vaccines for other infectious diseases in the future. The development of varicella vaccine by Prof. M. Takahashi is one of the great achievements in the vaccinology. We, the JSV members, believe that we need to keep and strengthen the academic activity in the field of vaccinology as we have done before. In this supplement, Special Issue from the Japanese Society for Vaccinology, the manuscripts submitted by the members of JSV, which are partly specific to Japan but contribute to the international society, are published. The contents of the manuscripts are focused on development of new vaccines, epidemiology of vaccine preventable diseases, evaluation of currently used vaccines, and basic vaccinology in Japan.