Adenovirus-vectored drug-vaccine duo as a potential driver for conferring mass protection against infectious diseases.

The disease-fighting power of vaccines has been a public health bonanza credited with the worldwide reduction of mortality and morbidity. The goal to further amplify its power by boosting vaccine coverage requires the development of a new generation of rapid-response vaccines that can be mass produced at low costs and mass administered by nonmedical personnel. The new vaccines also have to be endowed with a higher safety margin than that of conventional vaccines. The nonreplicating adenovirus-vectored vaccine holds promise in boosting vaccine coverage because the vector can be rapidly manufactured in serum-free suspension cells in response to a surge in demand, and noninvasively administered by nasal spray into human subjects in compliance with evolutionary medicine. In contrast to parenteral injection, noninvasive mucosal vaccination minimizes systemic inflammation. Moreover, pre-existing adenovirus immunity does not interfere appreciably with the potency of an adenovirus-vectored nasal vaccine. Nasal administration of adenovirus vectors encoding pathogen antigens is not only fear-free and painless, but also confers rapid and sustained protection against mucosal pathogens as a drug-vaccine duo since adenovirus particles alone without transgene expression can induce an anti-influenza state in the airway. In addition to human vaccination, animals can also be mass immunized by this class of vectored vaccines.