Vaccine candidates against leishmania under current research

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The search for vaccines to prevent human leishmaniasis is an active field of investigation aimed to prevent the devastating effects of this family of diseases on human health. The design and commercialization of several vaccines against canine leishmaniasis is a hopeful advance toward the achievement of a human vaccine.

Areas covered: This review includes a summary of the most relevant immunological aspects accompanying leishmaniasis in natural hosts as well as a description of the latest advances in the multiple strategies that are being followed to develop leishmanial prophylactic vaccines. We have combined citations of the latest specialized reviews with research articles presenting the most recent results.

Expert commentary: Achieving safe, effective, durable and low-cost prophylactic vaccines against leishmaniasis is still a major challenge. These vaccines should control not only parasite progression, but also the accompanying pathology, which results from an imbalanced interaction between the infectious agent and the human host immune system. Different strategies for development of vaccines are currently under investigation. They range from the use of live non-pathogenic vectors to the employment of subunit vaccines combined with adjuvants and/or delivery systems inducing cell-mediated immunity.

KEYWORDS:

• Leishmania
• vaccines
• experimental models
• adjuvant
• immune response
• clinical trials

Acknowledgments

We thank Esther Garde PhD for her collaboration in the experiments regarding KMP-11 purification. We also thank Prof. Filip Lim for his critical reading of the manuscript.

Declaration of interest

M Soto is a public employee - University Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Head Investigator of grant FISPI14/00366 (FEDER FUNDING), Ministerio Ciencia y Tecnología. S Iborra is a postdoctoral researcher at the CNIC and Head Investigator of grant SAF2015-74561-JIN (FEDER FUNDING), Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. JM Requena is a public employee - University Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and coordinator of grant (ISCIII-RETICRD16/0027/0008-FEDER). JC Solana is a predoctoral researcher at the CBMSO. 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. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e innovación [grant number FISPI14/00366 (FEDER FUNDING)] for MS, the Health Institute Carlos III (ISCIII) [grant number ISCIII-RETICRD16/0027/0008-FEDER] for JMR and the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad [grant number SAF2015-74561-JIN (FEDER FUNDING)] for SI. CBMSO institutional grants from Fundación Ramón Areces and Banco de Santander are also acknowlegded.