The potential for vaccine development against chlamydial infection and disease

Chlamydia trachomatis and Chlamydia pneumoniae appear to share a common immunobiology with about 80% of their protein coding genes being orthologs. Progress in DNA vaccine development for C. trachomatis suggests that such a subunit approach may prove useful for C. pneumoniae. The recent finding that it is possible to select for chlamydiae with targeted mutations in key metabolic genes together with the new knowledge of the chlamydia genome also suggests that it may be possible to develop live attenuated strains of chlamydiae for use as vaccine.