Employing live microbes for vaccine delivery

The employment of live attenuated vaccines has a long-standing record in human and veterinary medicine. Most of the vaccines in current use were empirically developed during the last century. Today, due to the great advances in fields such as immunology and bioengineering, the rational development of live attenuated vaccines becomes increasingly feasible. Moreover, live vaccines can be used as carrier systems for heterologous antigens or therapeutic factors. In each case, the development of a recombinant live attenuated vaccine is a complex task where properties such as targeting specificity, antigen synthesis, antigen release, and safety aspects have to be integrated. A range of such recombinant vaccine candidates have successfully been tested in the clinics, but very few have been approved so far. In many cases, further optimization of such vaccines is necessary with regard to their efficacy and safety profiles. In the present chapter, we focus on current strategies which are employed for the development of new and the optimization of first generation recombinant live vaccines based on bacteria and viruses. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Wien.