Innate immune recognition of poxviral vaccine vectors

Abstract

The study of poxviruses pioneered the field of vaccinology after Jenner’s remarkable discovery that ‘vaccination’ with the phylogenetically related cowpox virus conferred immunity to the devastating disease of smallpox. The study of poxviruses continues to enrich the field of virology because the global eradication of smallpox provides a unique example of the potency of effective immunization. Other poxviruses have since been developed as vaccine vectors for clinical and veterinary applications and include modified vaccinia virus strains such as modified vaccinia Ankara and NYVAC as well as the avipox viruses, fowlpox virus and canarypox virus. Despite the empirical development of poxvirus-based vectored vaccines, it is only now becoming apparent that we need to better understand how the innate arm of the immune system drives adaptive immunity to poxviruses, and how this information is relevant to vaccine design strategies, which are the topics addressed in this article.

Keywords::

• dendritic cells
• immunomodulatory proteins
• innate immunity
• pattern-recognition receptors
• poxviruses
• rational vaccine design
• type I interferons

Financial & competing interests disclosure

Previous work by our group has been supported in part by funding from the Australian Research Council Linkage Project grant LP05618109 (John D Hayball and Michael P Brown), a National Health and Medical Research Early Career Research Fellowship APP1012386 (Kerrilyn R Diener), and a Cancer Council of South Australia PhD stipend (Erin L Lousberg). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.