Science AI Journal
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Research topic

Open research questions in vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches

126 gap statements mined from vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches papers in our 4.5M-paper local library, which holds 754 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.

Choosing where to publish on vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches? See the ranked Biology journals.

What the literature leaves open

  • The lack of robust, deployment-ready pipelines for antiviral development. The need for improved global public health preparedness. The limited use of AI tools in vaccine technology and antiviral drug discovery.

    Artificial intelligence for coordinating vaccine design, antiviral discovery, and real-world monitoring in the era of emerging and endemic viral threats · 2026 · DOI

  • Further functional assessment of Zot as a candidate virulence-associated protein is suggested. Experimental validation of its contribution to virulence in A. baumannii is needed.

    High resolution immunoinformatic profiling of Zonula occludens toxin reveals a conserved multiepitope vaccine candidate in Acinetobacter baumannii · 2026 · DOI

  • The gap in the development of immune-based strategies against A. baumannii is also noted.

    High resolution immunoinformatic profiling of Zonula occludens toxin reveals a conserved multiepitope vaccine candidate in Acinetobacter baumannii · 2026 · DOI

  • The traditional vaccine development cycle is not adequate for addressing the urgent needs of rapid pandemics. There is a need for effective decision-making approaches in vaccine development.

    Evaluating Vaccine Development Strategies Using the TOPSIS Method · 2026 · DOI

  • Third, while our AI-assisted peptide design provides promising candidates, experimental validation of peptide binding affinity, specificity, and anti-tumor activity in vivo remains to be performed. Several limitations of this study should be acknowledged.

    Identification of G4-regulated immune-related drug targets for prostate cancer based on G4 screen and machine learning · 2026 · DOI

  • Further studies can focus on the development of multiepitope vaccines using the identified epitopes. The framework provided can be applied to other understudied zoonotic threats.

    Immunoinformatics Analysis of Mojiang Virus G Protein Epitopes · 2026 · DOI

  • Future work should focus on improving robustness to naturally imbalanced distributions, reducing reliance on synthetic oversampling strategies, and validating the model across larger, independent multi-omics cohorts. While performance under imbalanced data remains limited, for example, MCC equals 0.

    A novel computational framework for tumor-specific T cell antigen identification using a deep neural network · 2026 · DOI

  • Future work will focus on experimental verification of its immunogenicity and protective efficacy, including in vitro yak peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) stimulation assays to evaluate antigen-specific immune responses, and in vivo immunization and challenge trials to confirm its actual protective potential against C.

    Immunoinformatics-driven design of a multi-epitope vaccine against Clostridium perfringens in yaks · 2026 · DOI

  • The study only evaluates a limited number of folding models. The pipeline only generates scFv-Ag structure predictions and does not consider other types of antibody-antigen complexes.

    Folding scFv--Antigen Complexes at Scale · 2026 · DOI

  • The absence of observed complexes does not imply lack of binding. Related antigens in training and test data can lead to overestimation of generalization. Antigen-side epitope grounding remains a challenge.

    Strict OOD Antigen-to-Antibody Retrieval with CDR-Aware Slot Late Interaction · 2026 · DOI

  • The absence of observed complexes does not imply lack of binding, making it challenging to construct confirmed negatives. The model does not address antigen-side epitope grounding.

    Strict OOD Antigen-to-Antibody Retrieval with CDR-Aware Slot Late Interaction · 2026 · DOI

  • A key limitation of this study is the relatively small number of patients available for model training and evaluation, which reflects the practical realities of PCV development rather than a methodological constraint.

    Automating neoantigen selection for personalized cancer vaccine design · 2026 · DOI

  • We selected three understudied alleles for further evaluation, finding that large gains coincided with broader sequence exploration at non-anchor positions while anchor specificity was preserved.

    Hybrid quantum-classical de novo design of MHC-binding peptides · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of an effective vaccine against dengue virus. The need for a vaccine that can combat all DENV serotypes.

    Design of a novel epitope-based tetravalent subunit vaccine against dengue virus: An immunoinformatic approach · 2026 · DOI

  • Large language models can learn new tasks through in-context learning (ICL), yet this ability remains underexplored for biological sequence classification.

    A systematic evaluation of in-context learning in large language models for antibody characterization · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of an antidote able to rapidly reverse the effect of recombinant-hirudin drugs.

    Genomic diversity of the hirudin multigene family and its implications for antithrombotic and antitumor biotherapeutic design · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of integration of genomic content with clinical, anticancer and engineering outcomes. The gaps that limit drug-development programs targeting this peptide family.

    Genomic diversity of the hirudin multigene family and its implications for antithrombotic and antitumor biotherapeutic design · 2026 · DOI

  • Over the past four decades, the field of immunogenetics has been defined by a dual revolution: the relentless advance of HLA typing technology from low-resolution serology to high-resolution NGS, and the concurrent rise of powerful computational tools. The progress in genotyping has improved graft survival in transplantation by enabling precise allele-level matching (Dehn et al. 2019).

    The digital keystone: how artificial intelligence is reshaping HLA research and clinical practice · 2026 · DOI

  • The dysfunction of this balance can drive pathologies such as type 1 diabetes and complications in transplantation. The COVID-19 pandemic further underscores how viral evasion and dysregulated cytokine production can result in severe outcomes.

    A comprehensive mechanistic multicellular model of the human immune system spanning 11 diseases · 2026 · DOI

  • To explore the application of the model in personalized medicine.

    A comprehensive mechanistic multicellular model of the human immune system spanning 11 diseases · 2026 · DOI

  • Public reference databases are dominated by immunodominant viral epitopes presented on common HLA alleles, whereas the tumor-associated and neoantigen specificities of greatest translational interest are sparsely represented or absent—an imbalance under which a model attains competence only over a privileged region of antigen space.

    PRISM : Peptide-specificity annotation of T-cell receptors with uncertainty quantification · 2026 · DOI

  • Pre-emptive development of broad-spectrum vaccines and antibodies targeting conserved viral elements. Integration of One Health data spanning human, animal, and environmental surveillance. Development of global data-sharing platforms for real-time model updating.

    Artificial intelligence directed computational protein design: lessons from COVID-19 for pandemic-ready vaccines and antibody therapeutics · 2026 · DOI

  • The development of more advanced AI tools for vaccine design and antiviral discovery. The investigation of the use of AI in other areas of public health. The exploration of the potential applications of AI-enabled genomic surveillance tools.

    Artificial intelligence for coordinating vaccine design, antiviral discovery, and real-world monitoring in the era of emerging and endemic viral threats · 2026 · DOI

  • Tested in silico across 131 HLA alleles, quantum-derived priors increased the yield of predicted strong binders, with the largest relative gains for understudied alleles where classical baselines perform worst.

    Hybrid quantum-classical de novo design of MHC-binding peptides · 2026 · DOI

  • Parameterizing quantitative systems pharmacology models to represent tumor biology. Predicting treatment response and optimizing cancer therapy strategies.

    Quantitative calibration of a spatial QSP model identifies fibroblast impact on HCC immunotherapy · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches

Most recent work

Find a gap in your own vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches sub-topic

This page shows what the vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches literature already flags as unresolved. To narrow it to your specific question, search the Research Gap Finder: the search is free with a free account and lists the papers closest to your topic first. Unlocking that topic (50 credits, charged once) fills the comparison table from our 4.5M-paper local library and writes the gaps from its rows.

Open the Research Gap Finder →

Related topics in Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Gut microbiota and health
2,514 open questions
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
864 open questions
Extracellular vesicles in disease
854 open questions
RNA modifications and cancer
830 open questions
Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria
732 open questions
Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
627 open questions
Mitochondrial Function and Pathology
609 open questions
Epigenetics and DNA Methylation
542 open questions
Open questions raised by papers listed on this page include: (1) The lack of robust, deployment-ready pipelines for antiviral development (“Artificial intelligence for coordinating vaccine design, antiviral discovery,…”, 2026); (2) Experimental validation of its contribution to virulence in A. baumannii is needed (“High resolution immunoinformatic profiling of Zonula occludens toxin reveals a…”, 2026); (3) There is a need for effective decision-making approaches in vaccine development (“Evaluating Vaccine Development Strategies Using the TOPSIS Method”, 2026); (4) Future work should focus on improving robustness to naturally imbalanced distributions, reducing reliance on synthetic oversampling strategies, and validating the model across larger, independent multi-omics cohorts (“A novel computational framework for tumor-specific T cell antigen…”, 2026); (5) The absence of observed complexes does not imply lack of binding (“Strict OOD Antigen-to-Antibody Retrieval with CDR-Aware Slot Late Interaction”, 2026). 126 gap statements have been mined from vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches papers in our 4.5M-paper local library, which holds 754 papers on the topic; the gaps come from whichever of those papers state one. They are mostly the research gaps the authors state and the papers' abstracts, plus future-work, limitations and challenges passages. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one, so you can read the original claim in context.

Tools for your next paper

Gaps & Literature SearchFind open questions in any field — 120,000+ open gaps mined from our own library.Pre-CheckIs your paper ready? Acceptance odds for top, mid and open/emerging journals, in seconds.Journal FinderA ranked shortlist of target journals from a 17,500-venue index.Duplicate Publication CheckerCheck for prior publication across 7 sources and our local library.Citation GeneratorFreeA DOI or title → APA, MLA, Vancouver, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS. No signup.Graphical Abstract MakerFreeTurn your findings into a colorblind-safe graphical abstract.

How Pre-Check worksHow AI Review works

Compare the category — Honest roundups of the AI research tools, ours listed alongside the alternatives.

Command palette

Jump anywhere, run any action.