Prospects for control of emerging infectious diseases with plasmid DNA vaccines

Moss, Ronald B

DNA vaccination has many advantages compared with conventional vaccine approaches (Appendix 1) particularly in the setting of protecting against potentially lethal emerging infectious diseases. Protecting against a particular pathogen may require immunity to more than one component of the organism and may require stimulation of different components of the host immune system. Traditionally, most preventive vaccines have relied on antibodies as the main correlate of protection, components that prevent infection or disease. However, T cells play an important role in controlling disease for established infection. Conventional vaccines based on whole pathogens typically induce immune responses against a number of irrelevant components of the organism. Subunit protein vaccines target individual components of the pathogen and usually only stimulate antibodies. DNA vaccines can accommodate a combination of different genes that code for different antigens from one or more different pathogens. This can result in the generation of broad immunity to multiple protein antigens. DNA vaccines have also been observed to stimulate both antibody and T cell arms of the immune system including those that are specialized to kill viruses or cancer cells (via cytotoxic or killer T cells). A significant advantage, especially for emerging pathogens, is that DNA vaccines do not require the handling of potentially deadly infectious agents. In addition they have a significantly shorter production time, something paramounrt with an ongoing pandemic.