Recent Approaches to
Production of Vaccines
Active Immunization
Vaccines Produced by Recombinant DNA
• A recombinant vaccine is a vaccine produced
through recombinant DNA technology. This
involves inserting the DNA encoding an
antigen (such as a bacterial surface protein)
that stimulates an immune response into
bacterial or mammalian cells, expressing the
antigen in these cells and then purifying it
from them.
Recombinant vaccines fall into three basic
categories:
• Subunit recombinant vaccines
• Attenuated recombinant vaccines
• Vector recombinant vaccines
Subunit recombinant vaccines:
• These are the components of the pathogenic organisms.
Subunit vaccines include proteins, peptides and DNA.
Attenuated recombinant vaccines:
• These are the genetically modified pathogenic
organisms (bacteria or viruses) that are made non-
pathogenic and used as vaccines.
Vector recombinant vaccines:
• These are the genetically modified viral vectors that can
be used as vaccines against certain pathogens. Some of
the developments made in the production of
recombinant vaccines against certain diseases are briefly
described
Conjugated Polysaccharides
• Conjugated Polysaccharide vaccines have
revolutionized the approach to vaccination
against encapsulated bacterial pathogen.
• Conjugation of polysaccharide to a
protein( e.g tetanus or diphtheria toxoid)
results in a molecule that behaves as a T-
dependent antigent and elicit strong antibody
responses to the polysaccharide moeity.
Bacterium- Carrier vaccine
• Attenuated bacteria such as strains of
Salmonella typhimurium, Escherichia coli and
bacillus Calmette-Guerin can also serve
carriers for pathogen genes in an effort to
elicit specific pathogenic response.
• These bacteria are altered by recombinant
technique, which introduce a foreign gene
that can express the antigen of pathogenic
microbes and induce immune response.
Viral Vector vaccine
• For viral vector vaccines, viral vectors are
genetically engineered to introduce target
genes encoding key antigens of pathogens.
Currently, widely used viral vectors include
adenovirus, measles virus, influenza viruses
and poxvirus.
• It can potentially induced both cell-mediated
and antibody-mediated immunity.
Toxoids
• Inactivated toxins produced by bacteria were
used to create toxoid vaccines. Heat,
chemicals, or other techniques were used to
deactivate these protein-based toxins.
• Aluminum and calcium are used as adjuvant
salts to increase the immune system's
response.
• Although the risk of infection with toxoid
vaccines is shallow, and these vaccines are less
sensitive to environmental changes, some
anaphylaxis cases are reported with
tetanus toxoid
• Tetanus and diphtheria are two examples of
bacteria that produce toxins that lead to
illness
DNA Vaccine
• DNA vaccines represent an innovative
approach allowing the induction of humoral
and cell-mediated antigen-specific immune
response in systemic and mucosal
compartments.
• Vaccines consist of plasmid DNA-encoding
antigens that become expressed in host cells,
including species-specific post translational
modifications.
• DNA vaccines employ genes encoding proteins
of pathogens or tumors, rather than using the
proteins themselves, a live replicating vector,
or an attenuated version of the pathogen
itself.
• A DNA vaccine is constructed using
recombinant DNA technology to molecularly
clone a DNA sequence encoding the desired
immunogen into a plasmid expression vector.
• The vaccine plasmid is transformed
(introduced) into bacteria, the bacteria grown
to amplify the plasmid.
• The plasmid purified from the bacterial culture
and dissolved in saline.
• The purified plasmid DNA is then directly
inoculated into the animal to be vaccinated.
Cells that take up the DNA in the vaccinated
host produce the immunizing protein
DNA Vaccination
Peptide Vaccine
• Peptide vaccines are usually composed by
single or multiple different peptides in a
formulation that includes adjuvants to boost
their efficacy.
• Peptide vaccines theoretically have several
advantages over other types of vaccines
• Compared to inactive or attenuated pathogen
vaccines (classically used to prevent infectious
disease), peptide vaccines may require multiple
immunizations to achieve significant levels of
immune response.
• Easy synthesis with low cost, increased stability,
and relative safety are generally demonstrated
in numerous preclinical and clinical studies. In
addition, peptide vaccines have no limitation in
target diseases from virus infection to
Alzheimer disease and even allergy