Recent approaches in vaccine development against Streptococcus pneumoniae

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major cause of morbidity and mortality among children under 5 years of age worldwide. Vaccines have long been used for protection against pneumococcal infections. Capsular polysaccharides of pneumococci are main antigenic components of these vaccines. However, pneumococcal polysaccharide-based vaccines are not able to elicit appropriate immunological responses in young children and cannot induce the immune memory. Thus, pneumococcal conjugate vaccines were developed through chemical coupling of an immunogenic carrier protein to the capsule. The currently available pneumococcal conjugate vaccines elicited protection against the bacterium efficiently. However, these vaccines are expensive to manufacture and have limited serotype coverage. In this mini-review, therefore, we describe approaches attempted by researchers to circumvent the shortcomings of the conjugate vaccines including specifying appropriate cultivation conditions for the production of S. pneumoniae capsular antigens, development of suitable expression systems for the frequently used carrier protein in the conjugate vaccines (cross-reacting material 197), construction of protein-based vaccines, whole-cell vaccines, DNA vaccines, and using antigen delivery vehicles. Future trends in this field are also discussed.