Vaccine engineering improved by hybrid technology.

The term 'vaccination' describes the induction of protective immune responses against infectious diseases, but is also used to define antigen-specific forms of immunotherapy for allergy, cancer and autoimmunity. Successful vaccination requires either immune modulation or the induction of robust specific immunity to several disease-causing antigens. However, natural antigen sources may contain greatly varying amounts of these antigens and some of them may exhibit low immunogenicity. An approach for overcoming the latter problems has been developed for allergy vaccines recently. This approach is based on the genetic engineering of hybrid molecules, consisting of several major disease-eliciting antigens/epitopes. Such hybrid molecules can be built to include the most relevant epitopes of complex antigen sources. Moreover, fusion of different antigens in the form of hybrid molecules strongly increases their immunogenicity. The hybrid approach can also be used for the generation of mosaic antigens with altered immunological properties, which consist of re-shuffled antigen pieces. We exemplify the use of hybrid technology for the generation of new allergy vaccines and discuss its potential applicability for the development of vaccines for infectious diseases, cancer and autoimmunity. Copyright 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel