Bikash Sahay, Mahesh Kathania, Jennifer L Owen and Mansour Mohamadzadeh
Parenteral injectionis the most common routeof administration for vaccines and therapeutics. Despite their frequent use, needle-based immunizations have several limitations; (i) needle phobias that are common in both adults and children, (ii) the requirement of trained medical personnel to administer vaccines, creating a limitation for mass vaccination, and (iii) accidental needle sticks, a serious concern in both developed and developing countries. Possible alternatives to injections have recently emerged and include (i) dermal and (ii) oral administration of vaccines. Here, we describe a methodology developed in our laboratory using intestinal bacteria that are considered safe for human consumption. Additionally, we have designed a dendritic cell (DC)-targeting sequence that delivers antigens directly to DCs. In this report, we discuss how DC-targeting peptide binding is not limited to human and murine antigen presenting cells; rather, it consistently binds with DCs of different species. Our data suggest that a DC-targeted oral vaccine platform could be used to develop vaccines for a variety of host animals.