Design and production of recombinant subunit vaccines

The development of subunit vaccines is presently the main strategy being evaluated for prevention of infectious diseases. The use of recombinant-DNA techniques has facilitated the development of new principles for design and production of subunit vaccines. First of all, the properties of a target protein immunogen can be improved by the use of gene-fusion technology or by the creation of specific changes, to generate 'second-generation protein vaccines'. Properties that can be modified include protein solubility, protein stability, in vivo half-lives, etc. In addition, for subunit protein vaccine candidates, the immunogenic properties can be significantly augmented by the addition of immunopotentiating tags or by means of targeting to immunoreactive sites. The recombinant subunit vaccine can furthermore be adapted by gene-fusion technology, to be efficiently incorporated into immunopotentiating adjuvant systems. Also in passive vaccination strategies, i.e. the use of antibodies or antibody fragments for prevention of infectious diseases, the recombinant strategies have become increasingly important. Humanized antibodies and antibody fusion proteins represent common present anti-infectious-disease agents. The selected examples will indicate that recombinant strategies will indeed have an impact on the design, selection and production of recombinant proteins to be used in the prevention of infectious diseases.