Nucleic Acid Vaccines

摘要

A new method of immunization was discovered in the early 1990s. Several research groups inde- pendently demonstrated that direct inoculation of DNA plasmids coding for a specific protein antigen could elicit immune responses against that antigen. Since in theory the mRNA molecules also have the potential to be translated into the protein antigen, this vaccination approach was officially named by WHO as the nucleic acid vaccination even though the term DNA vaccine has been used more commonly in the literature. This novel approach is considered the fourth generation of vaccines after live attenuated vac- cines, killed or inactivated vaccines and recombinant protein based subunit vaccines.