DNA Vaccination: Tolerance and Autoimmunity

Infectious diseases result in significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Preventing these infections is both a public health priority and the primary goal of vaccine research. The discovery that cell-mediated and/or humoral immune responses against viruses, parasites, bacteria and tumor antigens can be induced by antigen-encoding DNA plasmids is revolutionizing the vaccine development field (1 –3 ). DNA vaccines (also known as plasmid DNA or nucleic acid vaccines) have been proven to successfully prevent infection in a variety of animal models, and are currently undergoing clinical trials in humans for the prevention of a variety of infections, including HIV (1 ,4 ,5 ).