An Insight into Poliovirus Biology

One of the most successful events in the control of infectious diseases has been the development of inactivated and oral poliovaccines in the 1950's. The intensive use of vaccines in some areas of the world, like North America and Europe, has resulted in the disappearance of outbreaks of disease while, in many developing countries, poliomyelitis is still a major public health problem. However, this considerable accomplishment was achieved at a time when we had very little basic knowledge of poliovirus biology. This situation has changed dramatically within the last years, because, thanks to progress in molecular biology and immunochemistry, powerful new tools have become available. This has also created a favourable climate for improving the safety and the efficacy of currently used poliovaccines and for replacing them with a new one which is scientifically better designed. Nonetheless, in the near future the most predictable consequence of contemporary research on poliovirus will be the scientific explanation for poliovaccine efficacy which is still an enigmatic problem. This is the reason why poliovirus antigenicity and virulence has became an important field of investigation in the recent years. Beyond the problem of poliovaccine efficacy, the present studies on poliovirus also have an important cognitive aspect. The simplicity of the structure of poliovirion should allow elucidation of relationships between chemical structure of the genotype and biological functions of the phenotype.