Antibody mediated, ‘unnatural’ immunity based vaccines against Visceral Leishmaniasis
Year: 2021
Type: other
Abstract: Current vaccine approaches against Leishmaniasis aimed at mimicking the T cell responses associated with healing forms of leishmanial disease have so far been unsuccessful. As most currently licensed vaccines work by eliciting humoral responses that can be maintained for remarkably long periods even in the absence of persisting antigen, an anti-Leishmania vaccine that can rely on antibodies to inhibit the infectious process in the mammalian host might overcome one of the main barriers to the development of an effective T cell-based vaccine. Because of its intracellular lifestyle in the mammalian host, and the fact that non-immune humans and dogs with active VL have spectacularly high titers of anti-leishmanial Abs, a role for antibody in naturally or artificially acquired immunity has been largely ignored. However, there remains the possibility that antibodies targeting the infective, metacyclic promastigotes inoculated by the fly might be inhibitory to the earliest stages of infection in the mammalian host. All promastigote developmental stages express a number of well defined virulence molecules that would seem appropriate targets for antibody mediated attack. The main objective of the current studies was to test the hypothesis that antibodies directed at the common phosphoglycan chains of LPG and PPG expressed by metacyclic promastigotes will confer protection against sand fly transmitted infection with L. major in mice, and against L. donovani in hamsters.
Authors: David Sacks, Andrea Paun
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4416488818