Abstract
Mucosal vaccine has been considered to be a novel prospective vaccine against infectious diseases (e.g., influenza and infectious enteritis) because it can induce double layered protective immunity through both mucosal and systemic immune systems. Recent advances in DDS technology and progresses in cellular and molecular understanding of the mucosal immune system allow us to overcome several problems in the development of mucosal vaccine.
Especially, DDS not only protects antigen from harsh conditions of the mucosal environment but also delivers antigen efficiently to mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) including Peyer's patches and nasopharynx-associated lymphoid tissue (NALT), initiation sites for the antigen-specific immune response. In this review, we shed light on the dynamics of mucosal immune system and recent achievements toward the development of DDS-based mucosal vaccine.
