Alphavirus-based vaccines.

Alphavirus vectors can be appliedfor vaccine production as naked RNA molecules, DNA plasmids or recombinant replication-deficient viral particles. The common feature for all these vectors is the alphavirus replicon, which is responsible for the strong RNA amplification in host cells enabling extreme transgene expression levels. Additionally, live replication-proficient virus has elicited reasonable immune responses. For many viral genes, humoral and cellular cytotoxic T-lymphocyte responses have been obtained. In other cases, monoclonal antibodies have been generated against the encoded antigen. Moreover, protection against challenges with lethal doses of virus has been achieved. Alphavirus vaccine applications have been further extended to models for prophylactic tumor therapy.