Development of therapeutic vaccine for life style-related diseases

Abstract

In the 18th century, Edward Jenner proposed the vaccine for smallpox as a first vaccine therapy based on the legend that a vaccinia prevents the infection with smallpox. Recently, the therapeutic target of vaccine will expand from infectious diseases to various diseases, such as amyloid β or tau vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease. We are now going to develop a therapeutic vaccine to lifestyle-related diseases (i.e. high blood pressure), and aim to realize a novel therapy which will be injected once or twice per year from a daily medication. For this purpose, the appropriate choice of an antigen, carrier and adjuvants should be required to activate hormonal immunity by the vaccine, leading to efficient antibody production without toxicity, because the therapeutic target of our vaccine is an endogenous protein (i.e. hormone). The clinical advantage of this therapeutic vaccine is to improve the medical adherence and drug management because the multiple drug users are increased in particular old patients, so called polypharmacy. If the vaccine will take place of a part of medicine in future, it may give us a novel therapeutic option with several social benefits.