[Research Articles] Prime and target immunization protects against liver-stage malaria in mice

We describe an alternative "prime and target" vaccination strategy aimed specifically at inducing high numbers of tissue-resident memory T cells present in the liver at the time of hepatic infection. This approach bypasses the need for very high numbers of circulating T cells and markedly increases the efficacy of subunit immunization against liver-stage malaria with clinically relevant Ags and clinically tested viral vectors in murine challenge models. Translation to clinical use has begun, with encouraging results from a pilot safety and feasibility trial of intravenous chimpanzee adenovirus vaccination in humans. This work highlights the value of a prime-target approach for immunization against malaria and suggests that this strategy may represent a more general approach for prophylaxis or immunotherapy of other liver infections and diseases.

Source: Science Translational Medicine - September 26, 2018 Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Gola, A., Silman, D., Walters, A. A., Sridhar, S., Uderhardt, S., Salman, A. M., Halbroth, B. R., Bellamy, D., Bowyer, G., Powlson, J., Baker, M., Venkatraman, N., Poulton, I., Berrie, E., Roberts, R., Lawrie, A. M., Angus, B., Khan, S. M., Janse, C. J., Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research