The complexity of parasitic infections requires novel approaches to vaccine design. The versatility of DNA vaccination provides new perspectives. This review discusses the use of prime-boost immunizations, genetic adjuvants, multivalent vaccines and codon optimization for optimal DNA vaccine design against parasites.

8 Vaccine Development Laboratory, Department of Microbiology, Institute of Biomedical 9 Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. 10 Vaccine Development Laboratory, Department of Parasitology, Institute of Biomedical 11 Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil 12 Cancer Genomics Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and 13 Biotechnology (ICGEB), Cape Town 7...

The idea of presenting this commentary is to bring attention to the current status of clinical tests from several multiantigen vaccine candidates based on proteins produced by means of genetic engineering and molecular biology approaches and to suggest how new emerging technologies (OMICs) and bioinformatics might benefit vaccine development for better control of tuberculosis.

Vaccines have revolutionized modern public health. The effectiveness of some vaccines is limited by the variation in response observed between individuals and across populations. There is compelling evidence that a significant proportion of this variability can be attributed to human genetic variation, especially for those vaccines administered in early life. Identifying and understanding the d...

BACKGROUND Infection with multiple CMV strains is common in immunocompromised hosts, but its occurrence in normal hosts has not been well-studied. METHODS We analyzed CMV strains longitudinally in women who acquired CMV while enrolled in a CMV glycoprotein B (gB) vaccine trial. Sequencing of four variable genes was performed in samples collected from seroconversion and up to 34 months thereaf...

BCG vaccine (Mycobacterium bovis BCG-1 [Russia]) is the most important component of tuberculosis prophylaxis in Russia. This study represents the complete genome sequence and genetic characteristics of M. bovis BCG-1 (Russia), which has been used to manufacture BCG vaccine in Russia and in some other countries.

The efficacy of an HIV vaccine to prevent infection is likely to depend on the genetic variation of the exposing virus. This paper addresses the problem of using data from an HIV vaccine efficacy trial to detect such dependence in terms of the divergence of infecting HIV viruses in trial participants from the HIV strain that is contained in the vaccine. Because hundreds of amino acid sites in e...

Widespread use of 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) has led to significant reductions in disease while changing pneumococcal population dynamics via herd immunity and serotype replacement. We performed multilocus sequence typing (MLST) on 590 pneumococcal isolates obtained during the American Indian clinical trial of PCV7, in which communities were randomized for eligible children ...

Background Neuraminidase (NA) is one of the surface proteins of influenza A virus, which plays an important role in immunization against influenza infection and is recognized as an important therapeutic target. Genetic and antigenic changes and substitutions can influence the efficacy of vaccine and change viral sensitivity to NA inhibitors (NAIs). In this study, we performed phylogenetic and m...

Modeling the molecular mechanisms that govern genetic variation can be useful in understanding the dynamics that drive genetic state transition in quasispecies viruses. For example, there is considerable interest in understanding how the relatively benign vaccine strains of poliovirus eventually revert to forms that confer neurovirulence and cause disease (ie, vaccine-derived poliovirus). This ...