Algae-Made Vaccines Targeting Human Diseases

Abstract

The global need for new and economical vaccines has led to the development of new platforms for vaccine production. Today, several prototypes of subunit vaccines for human use have been produced in algae, mainly using Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as an expression host. Relevant human pathogens, such as Plasmodium falcifarum, Staphylococcus aureus, Hepatitis B virus, Influenza virus and Human papillomavirus as well as therapeutic antigens against chronic diseases (e.g., glutamic acid decarboxylase for diabetes; angiotensin II for hypertension; and ApoB100 for atherosclerosis) have been targeted with this technology. Most of the algae-made candidate vaccines have been characterized at the preclinical level with reasonable antigen productivity. Attractive immunogenic properties have been reported and some candidates resulted immunogenic orally. In addition, it is proposed that algae could serve as a direct delivery vehicle for oral vaccines in the form of freeze-dried biomass, which opens the opportunity to achieve vaccination without the requirement of a costly purification, cold chain distribution; and consequently very low cost easy to administer vaccines are envisioned. This outlook indicates a potential for using algae as an advantageous vaccine production host. Perspectives for the development of advanced prototypes of algae-made vaccines to fight human diseases are also provided in this chapter.