2017 Volume 67 Issue 1 Pages 2-10
According to reports from the World Health Organization in 2014, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are responsible for the deaths of more than 36 million people (~63% of the global total) annually, while infectious diseases are responsible for another 9.5 million (about 20% of the global total). Similar rates are seen in Japan, which has a super-aging society with increasing mortality due to cancer, ischemic heart disease, and pneumonia. Japan is also faced with national issues such as “the extension of healthy life expectancy” and “the reduction of health disparities”, which are the ultimate objectives to be realized through improvements in the lifestyle and social environment. Health care policies and approaches have therefore tended to shift in focus from society to the individual.
To date, we have investigated some novel nasal adjuvants for the improvement of mucosal vaccine that could induce a mucosal immune system in order to prevent invasion by infectious agents and environmental antigens through the mucosal surfaces. In this review, we briefly summarize our findings regarding the development and verification of novel nasal DNA adjuvants to target the activation of nasopharyngeal-associated lymphoid tissue (NALT) dendritic cells for use as nasal vaccines.
In addition, we examined whether nasal vaccines using our newly developed nasal DNA adjuvants are effective at preventing pneumococcal infection in elderly as well as young mice, and whether nasal immunization with Porphyromonas gingivalis (P. gingivalis) outer membrane protein and cholera toxin as an adjuvant prevents atherosclerosis induced by P. gingivalis infection.
We hope that the results of this study will promote the development of mucosal vaccine including nasal vaccines capable of controlling NCDs as well as infectious diseases in the near future, which will promote successful outcomes to help improve the quality of life of human beings in a super-aging society.
