Yukio Koide, Toshi Nagata, Atsushi Yoshida and Masato Uchijima
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Hamamatsu University School
of Medicine, Hamamatsu 431-3192, Japan
Abstract: DNA vaccination or genetic immunization is a rapidly
developing technology that offers new approaches for the prevention and
therapy of disease. Regarding the inoculation method of DNA vaccine, we
recommend the gene gun delivery system, which is a highly reliable method
compared to intramuscular inoculation. DNA vaccines could have potential
advantages over other types of vaccines in that these vaccines can induce
strong cellular immune responses, cytotoxic Tﾊlymphocytes and typeﾊ1 helperﾊT
cells, without resorting to live organisms or complicated protein formulation.
The cellular immune responses are especially required for the protection
against infections with intracellular pathogens such as viruses and Mycobacterium
tuberculosis and protection against cancers, suggesting that they seem
to be suitable targets of DNA vaccines. We describe here that their application
to bacterial infections requires optimization of codon usage in the DNA
vaccines to the host animal to improve translational efficiencies of the
bacteria genes. DNA vaccines for a variety of pathogens and cancers have
now entered phaseﾊI/II human clinical trials.
Keywords: DNA vaccine, Plasmid, Cytotoxic T lymphocyte, CpG motif