Abstract
Mucosal vaccines administered either orally or nasally have been shown to be effective in inducing antigen-specific immune responses at both systemic and mucosal compartments. Because of this two-layered protective immunity, mucosal vaccines are thought to be an ideal strategy for combating both emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. There is, however, no mucosal vaccine to use in human due to the lack of mucosal adjuvant with high efficacy and safety. In this regard, we succeeded in augmentation of protective immunity to viral infection by applying a mutant tumor necrosis factor-α(TNF-α), mTNF-K90R, that exhibits high bioactivity and resistance to proteases as a mucosal vaccine adjuvant.
In this review, we describe about the feasibility of functional cytokines as mucosal vaccine adjuvants in vaccine therapy for infectious diseases.
