Current vaccine approaches and emerging strategies against herpes simplex virus (HSV)

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Vaccine development for the disease caused by the herpes simplex virus (HSV) has been challenging over the years and is always in dire need of novel approaches for prevention and cure. To date, the HSV disease remains incurable and challenging to prevent. The disease is extremely widespread due to its high infection rate, resulting in millions of infection cases worldwide.

Areas covered

This review first explains the diverse forms of HSV-related disease presentations and reports past vaccine history for the disease. Next, this review examines current and novel HSV vaccine approaches being studied and tested for efficacy and safety as well as vaccines in clinical trial phases I to III. Modern approaches to vaccine design using bioinformatics are described. Finally, we discuss measures to enhance new vaccine development pipelines for HSV.

Expert opinion

Modernized approaches using in silico analysis and bioinformatics are emerging methods that exhibit potential for producing vaccines with enhanced targets and formulations. Although not yet fully established for HSV disease, we describe current studies using these approaches for HSV vaccine design to shed light on these methods. In addition, we provide up-to-date requirements of immunogenicity, adjuvant selection, and routes of administration.

KEYWORDS:

• HSV-1
• HSV-2
• vaccination
• clinical trials
• vaccine development
• bioinformatics

Article highlights

• Vaccines developed against HSV in the past serve as a foundation for the development of future vaccines as their targeting mechanisms and efficiencies can be re-evaluated, re-formulated and enhanced.

• The combination of classical formulations and technology provide new grounds for novel vaccine development. Bioinformatics data contains useful information which can enhance vaccine development.

• In vitro, in vivo experimentation and clinical trials remain as constant requirements to determine HSV vaccine safety and efficacy.

• Guidelines on immunogenicity, adjuvant requirements and routes of administration are required to continuously be updated and evaluated. We have provided recent information on these aspects to be considered in near future HSV vaccines.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no 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. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

Authors contributed equally to the writing and preparation of the review manuscript. SKL contributed to the supervision and final draft of this manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.