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Open Veterinary Journal Dec 2023The African swine fever virus (ASFV) poses a serious threat to global swine populations, underscoring the urgent need for effective preventive strategies. This... (Review)
Review
The African swine fever virus (ASFV) poses a serious threat to global swine populations, underscoring the urgent need for effective preventive strategies. This comprehensive review investigates the intricate interplay between innate, cellular, and humoral immunity against ASFV, with a focus on their relevance to vaccine development. By delving into immunopathogenesis and immunological challenges, this review article aims to provide a holistic perspective on the complexities of ASFV infections and immune evasion. Key findings underscore the critical role of innate immune recognition in shaping subsequent adaptive immune defenses, potential protective antigens, and the multifaceted nature of ASFV-specific antibodies and cytotoxic T-cell responses. Despite advancements, the unique attributes of ASFV present hurdles in the development of a successful vaccine. In conclusion, this review examines the current state of ASFV immune responses and offers insights into future research directions, fostering the development of effective interventions against this devastating pathogen.
Topics: Swine; Animals; African Swine Fever Virus; Viral Proteins; African Swine Fever; Immunity, Humoral; Vaccine Development; Swine Diseases
PubMed: 38292721
DOI: 10.5455/OVJ.2023.v13.i12.2 -
Viruses Sep 2022Polyomaviruses are nonenveloped icosahedral viruses with a double-stranded circular DNA containing approximately 5000 bp and 5-6 open reading frames. In contrast to... (Review)
Review
Polyomaviruses are nonenveloped icosahedral viruses with a double-stranded circular DNA containing approximately 5000 bp and 5-6 open reading frames. In contrast to mammalian polyomaviruses (MPVs), avian polyomaviruses (APVs) exhibit high lethality and multipathogenicity, causing severe infections in birds without oncogenicity. APVs are classified into 10 major species: Adélie penguin polyomavirus, budgerigar fledgling disease virus, butcherbird polyomavirus, canary polyomavirus, cormorant polyomavirus, crow polyomavirus, polyomavirus, finch polyomavirus, goose hemorrhagic polyomavirus, and Hungarian finch polyomavirus under the genus . This paper briefly reviews the genomic structure and pathogenicity of the 10 species of APV and some of their differences in terms of virulence from MPVs. Each gene's genomic size, number of amino acid residues encoding each gene, and key biologic functions are discussed. The rationale for APV classification from the family and phylogenetic analyses among the 10 APVs are also discussed. The clinical symptoms in birds caused by APV infection are summarized. Finally, the strategies for developing an effective vaccine containing essential epitopes for preventing virus infection in birds are discussed. We hope that more effective and safe vaccines with diverse protection will be developed in the future to solve or alleviate the problems of viral infection.
Topics: Amino Acids; Animals; Biological Products; DNA, Circular; Epitopes; Mammals; Passeriformes; Phylogeny; Polyomavirus; Polyomavirus Infections; Vaccine Development; Virulence
PubMed: 36146885
DOI: 10.3390/v14092079 -
Parasitology Dec 2021Ascariasis is the most prevalent helminth infection in the world and leads to significant, life-long morbidity, particularly in young children. Current efforts to...
Ascariasis is the most prevalent helminth infection in the world and leads to significant, life-long morbidity, particularly in young children. Current efforts to control and eradicate ascariasis in endemic regions have been met with significant challenges including high-rates of re-infection and potential development of anthelminthic drug resistance. Vaccines against ascariasis are a key tool that could break the transmission cycle and lead to disease eradication globally. Evolution of the vaccine pipeline has progressed, however no vaccine product has been brought to human clinical trials to date. Advancement in recombinant protein technology may provide the first step in generating an vaccine as well as a pan-helminthic vaccine ready for human trials. However, several roadblocks remain and investment in new technologies will be important to develop a successful human vaccine that is critically needed to prevent significant morbidity in -endemic regions around the world.
Topics: Animals; Ascariasis; Ascaris; Humans; Vaccine Development; Vaccines
PubMed: 35586777
DOI: 10.1017/s0031182021001347 -
Frontiers in Immunology 2022The world has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with unprecedented speed and vigor in the mass vaccination campaigns, targeted to reduce COVID-19 severity and... (Review)
Review
The world has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with unprecedented speed and vigor in the mass vaccination campaigns, targeted to reduce COVID-19 severity and mortality, reduce the pressure on the healthcare system, re-open society, and reduction in disease mortality and morbidity. Here we review the preclinical and clinical development of BBV152, a whole virus inactivated vaccine and an important tool in the fight to control this pandemic. BBV152, formulated with a TLR7/8 agonist adjuvant generates a Th1-biased immune response that induces high neutralization efficacy against different SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and robust long-term memory B- and T-cell responses. With seroconversion rates as high as 98.3% in vaccinated individuals, BBV152 shows 77.8% and 93.4% protection from symptomatic COVID-19 disease and severe symptomatic COVID-19 disease respectively. Studies in pediatric populations show superior immunogenicity (geometric mean titer ratio of 1.76 compared to an adult) with a seroconversion rate of >95%. The reactogenicity and safety profiles were comparable across all pediatric age groups between 2-18 yrs. as in adults. Like most approved vaccines, the BBV152 booster given 6 months after full vaccination, reverses a waning immunity, restores the neutralization efficacy, and shows synergy in a heterologous prime-boost study with about 3-fold or 300% increase in neutralization titers against multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. Based on the interim Phase III data, BBV152 received full authorization for adults and emergency use authorization for children from ages 6 to 18 years in India. It is also licensed for emergency use in 14 countries globally. Over 313 million vaccine doses have already been administered in India alone by April 18, 2022.
Topics: Adjuvants, Immunologic; Adolescent; Adult; COVID-19; COVID-19 Vaccines; Child; Child, Preschool; Humans; Pandemics; SARS-CoV-2; Toll-Like Receptor 7; Vaccine Development; Vaccines, Inactivated
PubMed: 36177016
DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.940715 -
Trends in Microbiology Nov 2021Antimicrobial resistance is an increasing global threat and alternative treatments substituting failing antibiotics are urgently needed. Vaccines are recognized as... (Review)
Review
Antimicrobial resistance is an increasing global threat and alternative treatments substituting failing antibiotics are urgently needed. Vaccines are recognized as highly effective tools to mitigate antimicrobial resistance; however, the selection of bacterial antigens as vaccine candidates remains challenging. In recent years, advances in mass spectrometry-based proteomics have led to the development of so-called immunopeptidomics approaches that allow the untargeted discovery of bacterial epitopes that are presented on the surface of infected cells. Especially for intracellular bacterial pathogens, immunopeptidomics holds great promise to uncover antigens that can be encoded in viral vector- or nucleic acid-based vaccines. This review provides an overview of immunopeptidomics studies on intracellular bacterial pathogens and considers future directions and challenges in advancing towards next-generation vaccines.
Topics: Antigens, Bacterial; Bacterial Vaccines; Mass Spectrometry; Proteomics; Vaccine Development
PubMed: 34030969
DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2021.04.010 -
Journal of Medical Virology Sep 2021Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has infected over 109 000 000 people with 2 423 443 deaths as of February 17, 2021. Currently, there are no...
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has infected over 109 000 000 people with 2 423 443 deaths as of February 17, 2021. Currently, there are no approved or consistently effective treatments, and conventional vaccines may take several years for development and testing. In silico methods of bioinformatics, vaccinogenomics, immunoinformatics, structural biology, and molecular simulations can be used for more rapid and precise vaccine design. This paper highlights two major immunoinformatics strategies that are used in designing novel and effective vaccines and therapeutics: reverse vaccinology and structural vaccinology.
Topics: COVID-19; COVID-19 Vaccines; Computational Biology; Humans; Immunogenicity, Vaccine; Vaccinology
PubMed: 33851735
DOI: 10.1002/jmv.27017 -
Frontiers in Immunology 2023is the causative agent of gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted infection responsible for a major burden of disease with a high global prevalence. Protective immunity to... (Review)
Review
is the causative agent of gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted infection responsible for a major burden of disease with a high global prevalence. Protective immunity to infection is often not observed in humans, possible due to high variability of key antigens, induction of blocking antibodies, or a large number of infections being relatively superficial and not inducing a strong immune response. is a strictly human pathogen, however, studies using mouse models provide useful insights into the immune response to gonorrhea. In mice, appears to avoid a protective Th1 response by inducing a less protective Th17 response. In mouse models, candidate vaccines which provoke a Th1 response can accelerate the clearance of gonococcus from the mouse female genital tract. Human studies indicate that natural infection often induces a limited immune response, with modest antibody responses, which may correlate with the clinical severity of gonococcal disease. Studies of cytokine responses to gonococcal infection in humans provide conflicting evidence as to whether infection induces an IL-17 response. However, there is evidence for limited induction of protective immunity from a study of female sex workers in Kenya. A controlled human infection model (CHIM) has been used to examine the immune response to gonococcal infection in male volunteers, but has not to date demonstrated protection against re-infection. Correlates of protection for gonorrhea are lacking, which has hampered the progress towards developing a successful vaccine. However, the finding that the serogroup B vaccines, elicit cross-protection against gonorrhea has invigorated the gonococcal vaccine field. More studies of infection in humans, either natural infection or CHIM studies, are needed to understand better gonococcal protective immunity.
Topics: Humans; Female; Male; Animals; Mice; Neisseria gonorrhoeae; Gonorrhea; Sex Workers; Vaccine Development; Cross Protection; Disease Models, Animal
PubMed: 37662926
DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2023.1248613 -
Frontiers in Public Health 2022The global outbreak of COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus elicited immense global interest in the development and distribution of safe COVID-19 vaccines by various...
The global outbreak of COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus elicited immense global interest in the development and distribution of safe COVID-19 vaccines by various governments and researchers, capable of stopping the spread of COVID-19 disease. After COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, several vaccines have been developed for emergency use authorization. The accelerated development of the vaccines was attributed to many factors but mainly by capitalizing on years of research and technology development. Although several countries tried to develop COVID-19 vaccines only a few countries succeeded. Therefore, we applied statistical methods to find factors that have contributed to the fast development of COVID-19 vaccines. All 11 countries that developed vaccines were considered and chose other 24 countries for comparison purposes according to different criteria of their R&D. Fourteen R&D indicator variables that are a measure of the R&D for all countries [World Development Indicators (WDI)] were obtained from the World Bank DataBank and data on the COVID-19 vaccine R&D were obtained from The Knowledge Portal of the Graduate Institute Geneva and Global Health Center. The World Bank records WDI yearly, and 2019 was chosen because of a few missing values. Also, different vaccine policies were adopted by different countries during the COVID-19 vaccination period, producing different impacts of vaccinations on the population. So, we applied the generalized estimating equations (GEE) approach to find policies that contributed greatly to decreasing the spread of COVID-19 using data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) and age-specific vaccination data from the European Center for Disease and Prevention and Control. Logistic regression, two-sample -test, and Wilcoxon rank-sum test found scientific and technical journals, liability, and COVID-19 Vaccine R&D Funding (investment in pharmaceutical industry US$) are significantly associated with fast COVID-19 vaccine development. Vaccine prioritization and government vaccine financial support were significantly associated with COVID-19 daily cases. The impact of vaccination on lowering the rate of new cases is greatly observed among the mid-aged populations (25-64 years) and lower or non-significant among the younger (<25 years) and (>65 years) older populations. Therefore, these age-groups especially > 79 can be prioritized during vaccine roll-out.
Topics: Humans; Middle Aged; COVID-19 Vaccines; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Vaccines; Policy; Vaccine Development
PubMed: 36544793
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.1048062 -
Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy Nov 2021Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). To halt the pandemic, multiple SARS-CoV-2... (Review)
Review
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). To halt the pandemic, multiple SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have been developed and several have been allowed for emergency use and rollout worldwide. With novel SARS-CoV-2 variants emerging and circulating widely, whether the original vaccines that were designed based on the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 were effective against these variants has been a contentious discussion. Moreover, some studies revealed the long-term changes of immune responses post SARS-CoV-2 infection or vaccination and the factors that might impact the vaccine-induced immunity. Thus, in this review, we have summarized the influence of mutational hotspots on the vaccine efficacy and characteristics of variants of interest and concern. We have also discussed the reasons that might result in discrepancies in the efficacy of different vaccines estimated in different trials. Furthermore, we provided an overview of the duration of immune responses after natural infection or vaccination and shed light on the factors that may affect the immunity induced by the vaccines, such as special disease conditions, sex, and pre-existing immunity, with the aim of aiding in combating COVID-19 and distributing SARS-CoV-2 vaccines under the prevalence of diverse SARS-CoV-2 variants.
Topics: COVID-19; COVID-19 Vaccines; Humans; Immunogenicity, Vaccine; Pandemics; SARS-CoV-2; Vaccination
PubMed: 34753918
DOI: 10.1038/s41392-021-00796-w -
Frontiers in Cellular and Infection... 2023While () bacteria are part of the human commensal flora, opportunistic invasion following breach of the epithelial layers can lead to a wide array of infection... (Review)
Review
While () bacteria are part of the human commensal flora, opportunistic invasion following breach of the epithelial layers can lead to a wide array of infection syndromes at both local and distant sites. Despite ubiquitous exposure from early infancy, the life-long risk of opportunistic infection is facilitated by a broad repertoire of virulence proteins. These proteins play a key role in inhibiting development of a long-term protective immune response by mechanisms ranging from dysregulation of the complement cascade to the disruption of leukocyte migration. In this review we describe the recent progress made in dissecting immune evasion, focusing on the role of the superantigen, staphylococcal protein A (SpA). Evasion of the normal human immune response drives the ability of to cause infection, often recurrently, and is also thought to be a major hindrance in the development of effective vaccination strategies. Understanding the role of virulence protein and determining methods overcoming or subverting these mechanisms could lead to much-needed breakthroughs in vaccine and monoclonal antibody development.
Topics: Humans; Staphylococcal Protein A; Staphylococcus aureus; Immune Evasion; Staphylococcal Infections; Vaccine Development
PubMed: 37829608
DOI: 10.3389/fcimb.2023.1242702