Advances & challenges in leptospiral vaccine development

Considerable progress has been made in the field of leptospiral vaccines development since its first use as a killed vaccine in guinea pigs. Despite the fact that the immunity conferred is restricted to serovars with closely related lipopolysaccharide antigen, certain vaccines have remained useful, especially in endemic regions, for the protection of high-risk individuals. Other conventional vaccines such as the live-attenuated vaccine and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) vaccine have not gained popularity due to the reactive response that follows their administration and the lack of understanding of the pathogenesis of leptospirosis. With the recent breakthrough and availability of complete genome sequences of Leptospira, development of novel vaccine including recombinant protein vaccine using reverse vaccinology approaches has yielded encouraging results. However, factors hindering the development of effective leptospiral vaccines include variation in serovar distribution from region to region, establishment of renal carrier status following vaccination and determination of the dose and endpoint titres acceptable as definitive indicators of protective immunity. In this review, advancements and progress made in LPS-based vaccines, killed- and live-attenuated vaccines, recombinant peptide vaccines and DNA vaccines against leptospirosis are highlighted.