Using the adenoviral vectored vaccine platform for bacterial infections

Abstract

With the recent success of adenoviral vaccines against Ebola and SARS-CoV-2, the potential of this platform in the fight against outbreak pathogens is being realized for human infectious diseases. This technology is suitable for large scale manufacture and relatively low cost. The potential of viral-vectors to induce T Helper type 1 and high antibody responses makes the use of this approach attractive in efforts to combat the disease and disability caused by viral pathogens. However, the case for their use in bacterial vaccines is less clear: the expression of a bacterial protein in a eukaryotic cell may impact on the antigen localization, induce unwanted glycosylation or affect protein conformation, and this is also true if using the mRNA vaccine platform. The potential and challenges of adenoviral vectors was explored against two bacterial diseases. While our work highlights the challenges inherent in developing novel vaccines using this technology and can be applied to mRNA, the successful progression of two novel bacterial vaccines to clinical development underlines the potential of these platforms for vaccine development against bacterial diseases, and their potential for veterinary use.

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