Progress in the development of a recombinant vaccine for human hookworm disease: the Human Hookworm Vaccine Initiative |
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Authors: | Hotez Peter J Zhan Bin Bethony Jeffrey M Loukas Alex Williamson Angela Goud Gaddam Narsa Hawdon John M Dobardzic Azra Dobardzic Reshad Ghosh Kashinath Bottazzi Maria Elena Mendez Susana Zook Bernard Wang Yan Liu Sen Essiet-Gibson Idong Chung-Debose Sophia Xiao Shuhua Knox David Meagher Michael Inan Mehmet Correa-Oliveira Rodrigo Vilk Paul Shepherd Herman R Brandt Walter Russell Philip K |
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Affiliation: | Department of Microbiology and Tropical Medicine, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA. mtmpjh@gwumc.edu |
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Abstract: | Hookworm infection is one of the most important parasitic infections of humans, possibly outranked only by malaria as a cause of misery and suffering. An estimated 1.2 billion people are infected with hookworm in areas of rural poverty in the tropics and subtropics. Epidemiological data collected in China, Southeast Asia and Brazil indicate that, unlike other soil-transmitted helminth infections, the highest hookworm burdens typically occur in adult populations, including the elderly. Emerging data on the host cellular immune responses of chronically infected populations suggest that hookworms induce a state of host anergy and immune hyporesponsiveness. These features account for the high rates of hookworm reinfection following treatment with anthelminthic drugs and therefore, the failure of anthelminthics to control hookworm. Despite the inability of the human host to develop naturally acquired immune responses to hookworm, there is evidence for the feasibility of developing a vaccine based on the successes of immunising laboratory animals with either attenuated larval vaccines or antigens extracted from the alimentary canal of adult blood-feeding stages. The major antigens associated with each of these larval and adult hookworm vaccines have been cloned and expressed in prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems. However, only eukaryotic expression systems (e.g., yeast, baculovirus, and insect cells) produce recombinant proteins that immunologically resemble the corresponding native antigens. A challenge for vaccinologists is to formulate selected eukaryotic antigens with appropriate adjuvants in order to elicit high antibody titres. In some cases, antigen-specific IgE responses are required to mediate protection. Another challenge will be to produce anti-hookworm vaccine antigens at high yield low cost suitable for immunising large impoverished populations living in the developing nations of the tropics. |
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Keywords: | Hookworm Necator Ancylostoma Vaccines Recombinant proteins Expression systems |
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