The advent of technologies for immunization with pathogen DNA rather than the intact organism or an isolated protein affords the potential to explore new routes of vaccination that are not dependent upon co- administration of non-specific adjuvants and that excludes the possibility of unintentional infection. In the case of pathogens infecting mucosal surfaces such as Chlamydia trachomatis, an obligate intracellular bacteria with a tropism for mucosal epithelium, bacteria DNA encoding an immunologically relevant protein can now be targeted directly to a mucosal surface to ensure subsequent immunity at the appropriate site. Towards this end, we have designed experiments to compare the efficacy of protection afforded by the induction of systemic immunity using an intradermal immunization protocol with the induction of mucosal immunity using an intranasal immunization protocol with DNA encoding the major outer membrane protein (MOMP) of mouse-adapted C. Trachomatis. The potential for enhanced protection through a combination of systemic and mucosal routes of immunization is also being evaluated.
| Nichols, Ralph C; Botson, John; Wang, Xiao Wei et al. (2011) A flexible approach to studying post-transcriptional gene regulation in stably transfected mammalian cells. Mol Biotechnol 48:210-7 |
