| MadSci Network: Immunology |
Dear Eric:
I have done some searching about DNA vaccines, and as you said most of the research is on DNA vaccines giving protection against viruses. There are reports of DNA vaccines generating measurable antibody, but I don't think in most cases that the antibody that was generated was the major reason for protection...i.e. simultaneous with the antibody they got good T cell immunity to the pathogen.
I found a few abstracts from articles which deal with bacteria and DNA vaccines. Maybe you could get these and see what they say. Here they are:
Number 1:
Immunol Cell Biol 1997 Aug;75(4):364-9
DNA vaccines for bacterial infections.
Strugnell RA, Drew D, Mercieca J, DiNatale S, Firez N, Dunstan SJ, Simmons CP, Vadolas J
Department of Microbiology, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia. r.strugnell@microbiology.unimelb.edu.au
DNA vaccines are an exciting development in vaccine technology which may have a special role in preventing viral infections and as 'theracines' for cancer. Their use in preventing bacterial infections has, by comparison, been less well documented. While it is unlikely that traditional, highly successful and cheap vaccines for diseases such as diphtheria will be replaced by DNA vaccines, naked DNA may be particularly appropriate for preventing bacterial infections where cytotoxic T cells confer protection, or where a Th1 type T cell response mediates resistance. For example, DNA vaccines containing different mycobacterial antigens have been shown to inhibit overt infections by Mycobacterium tuberculosis in rodent models. The use of DNA vaccines in bacterial infections may be complicated by fundamental differences between prokaryotic and eukaryotic genes and gene products, including mRNA stability, codon bias, secondary structures surrounding native start sequences and glycosylation. These problems can be solved by re-synthesis of bacterial genes to produce 'new' sequences which are more highly expressed by eukaryotic cells.
Number 2:
J Infect Dis 1997 Jan;175(1):91-7
An OspA-based DNA vaccine protects mice against infection with Borrelia burgdorferi.
Luke CJ, Carner K, Liang X, Barbour AG
Department of Microbiology, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, USA.
Immunization with recombinant OspA protein of Borrelia burgdorferi protects against experimental Lyme disease. In the present study, mice were injected intramuscularly with plasmid DNA (VR2210) encoding strain B31 OspA. In this vector, the ospA-coding sequence was under transcriptional control of the cytomegalovirus immediate early promoter. For negative and positive controls, mice were immunized with either the plasmid vector without an osp-coding sequence or recombinant OspA protein, respectively. Mice immunized with VR2210 DNA produced OspA-specific antibodies that bound to B. burgdorferi in a whole cell ELISA and inhibited the growth of a homologous strain of B. burgdorferi. Immunization with VR2210 protected mice against challenge with 2 infectious strains of B. burgdorferi, Sh-2-82 and N40. These results indicate that vaccination with plasmid DNA expressing OspA is an efficacious method for providing a protective response against B. burgdorferi infection.
If you want to do some free web searching for more articles, check out this site:
Good luck.
BRIAN EDELSON edelsonb@medicine.wustl.edu
Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Immunology.