Bacterial systems for the delivery of eukaryotic antigen expression vectors.

Attenuated bacterial strains allow the administration of recombinant vaccines via the mucosal surfaces. Whereas attenuated bacteria are generally engineered to express heterologous antigens, a novel approach employs intracellular bacteria for the delivery of eukaryotic antigen expression vectors (so-called DNA vaccines). This strategy allows a direct delivery of DNA to professional antigen-presenting cells (APC), such as macrophages and dendritic cells (DC), through bacterial infection. The bacteria used for DNA vaccine delivery either enter the host cell cytosol after phagocytosis by the APC, for example, Shigella and Listeria, or they remain in the phagosomal compartment, such as Salmonella. Both intracellular localizations of the bacterial carriers seem to be suitable for successful delivery of DNA vaccine vectors.