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What are the different types of vaccines and how do they differ?
Updated: 09-May-2025

There are several types of vaccines, each designed to stimulate immunity in different ways. The primary types include:

  • Inactivated or killed vaccines: These contain pathogens that have been killed or inactivated so they cannot cause disease. Examples include the polio vaccine and the hepatitis A vaccine.

  • Live attenuated vaccines: These use weakened forms of live pathogens that do not cause disease in healthy individuals. Examples are the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine and the yellow fever vaccine.

  • Subunit, recombinant, and conjugate vaccines: These use fragments of the pathogen (such as proteins or sugars) to stimulate the immune response. The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and the Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) vaccine are examples.

  • mRNA vaccines: These vaccines, such as the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, use messenger RNA to instruct cells to produce a protein from the pathogen, triggering an immune response.

  • DNA vaccines: These vaccines use DNA to instruct cells to produce antigens from the pathogen. Though still experimental, they have shown promise in animal trials.

Each vaccine type varies in its method of delivery, stability, and effectiveness, but all aim to trigger an immune response without causing the disease they are designed to protect against.

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