Challenges and Strategies for Developing Recombinant Vaccines against Leptospirosis: Role of Expression Platforms and Adjuvants in Achieving Protective Efficacy

Abstract

The first leptospiral recombinant vaccine was developed in the late 1990s. Since then, progress in the fields of reverse vaccinology (RV) and structural vaccinology (SV) has significantly improved the identification of novel surface-exposed and conserved vaccine targets. However, developing recombinant vaccines for leptospirosis faces various challenges, including selecting the ideal expression platform or delivery system, assessing immunogenicity, selecting adjuvants, establishing vaccine formulation, demonstrating protective efficacy against lethal disease in homologous challenge, achieving full renal clearance using experimental models, and reproducibility of protective efficacy against heterologous challenge. In this review, we highlight the role of the expression/delivery system employed in studies based on the well-known LipL32 and leptospiral immunoglobulin-like (Lig) proteins, as well as the choice of adjuvants, as key factors to achieving the best vaccine performance in terms of protective efficacy against lethal infection and induction of sterile immunity.

Keywords: Leptospira; adjuvants; hamster model; recombinant DNA technology; vaccine development.

Figure 1

Vaccine platforms and adjuvants for the development of recombinant vaccines against leptospirosis. The most common antigen expression and delivery systems are shown. Classical and nonclassical adjuvants used to prepare vaccine formulations are highlighted. Al(OH)₃: aluminum hydroxide; Freund: Freund’s adjuvant; LTB: heat-labile enterotoxin B subunit.