BioCentury
ARTICLE | Cover Story

Antigens by Special Delivery

March 27, 2008 7:00 AM UTC

DNA vaccines often require high and repeated dosing of antigen, which suggests suboptimal priming of the immune system and results in weak immunogenicity.1 Separate papers in Nature Biotechnology and the Journal of Clinical Investigationnow show that directly targeting antigen to dendritic cells leads to a greater T cell response and better DNA vaccine efficacy than nontargeted approaches.2,3

Because DNA vaccines can potentially incorporate multiple genes that encode a variety of immunostimulatory proteins, these therapeutics are theoretically ideal for targeting weakly immunogenic antigens associated with cancer and some persistent infections. But first-generation systemicvaccines have lacked efficacy...