Bacterial DNA Vaccines in Veterinary Medicine: a Review

Vaccines are one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine. Conventional vaccines have been used to control various infectious diseases for more than 200 years. However new vaccine strategies, which have great advantages over conventional vaccines in reliability, ease of production, stability and transportation, have been developed in parallel with the advances particularly in molecular biology, genetics, microbiology and immunology. One of these advances is the DNA-based vaccine development approach, and the studies on vaccines against various pathogens of primary importance in veterinary medicine are being pursued. DNA vaccination entails the administration of the DNA encoding vaccine antigen into the target organism (a recipient). DNA taken up by the host cell is then transcribed into mRNA, from which the vaccine proteins are translated. Host immune system recognizes the proteins expressed, and generates humoral (antibody)- and/or cell-mediated immune response. This review summarizes the current information on DNA vaccine studies against important bacterial pathogens in veterinary medicine.