Abstract

Schistosomiasis remains one of the most common human helminthiases, despite the availability of an effective drug against the causative parasites. Drug treatment programmes have several limitations, and it is likely that a vaccine is required for effective control. While decades of vaccine development have seen the discovery and testing of several candidate antigens, none have shown consistent and acceptable high levels of protection. The migrating larval stages are susceptible to immunity, however few larval-specific antigens have been discovered. Therefore, there is a need to identify novel larval-specific antigens, which may prove to be more efficacious than existing targets. Immunomics, a relatively new field developed to cope with the recent large influx of biological information, holds promise for the discovery of vaccine targets, and this review highlights some immunomic approaches to schistosome vaccine development. Firstly, a method to focus on the immune response elicited by the important and vulnerable larval stage is described, which allows a targeted study of the immunome at different tissue sites. Then, two high-throughput arrays are discussed for the identification of protein and carbohydrate antigens. It is anticipated that these approaches will progress vaccine development against the schistosomes, as well as other parasites.

Links

Publisher Full Text

Authors

McWilliam HE, Driguez P, Piedrafita D, McManus DP, Meeusen EN

Institution

Biotechnology Research Laboratories, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. hamish.mcwilliam@monash.edu

Source

Parasite immunology 34:5 2012 May pg 276-84

MeSH

Animals
Antibodies, Helminth
Antigens, Helminth
Drug Discovery
Humans
Schistosoma
Schistosomiasis
Vaccines

Pub Type(s)

Journal Article
Review

Language

eng

PubMed ID

22486551