Abstract
By employing modified Cornell model, we have evaluated the potential of adjunctive immunotherapy with DNA vaccines to shorten the tuberculosis chemotherapy period and reduce disease reactivation. We demonstrate that α-crystallin based DNA vaccine (DNAacr) significantly reduced the chemotherapy period from 12 weeks to 8 weeks when compared with the chemotherapy alone. Immunotherapy with SodA based DNA vaccine (DNAsod) reduced the pulmonary bacilli only as much as DNAvec. Both DNAacr and DNAsod, although significantly delayed the reactivation in comparison to the chemotherapy alone, this delay was associated with the immunostimulatory sequences present in the vector backbone and was not antigen specific. Both DNA vaccines resulted in the production of significantly higher number of T EM cells than the chemotherapy alone, however, only in the case of DNAsod, this enhancement was significant over the DNAvec treatment. Overall, our findings emphasize the immunotherapeutic potential of DNAacr in shortening the duration of TB chemotherapy.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1821 |
| Journal | Scientific reports |
| Volume | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2013 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We acknowledge Dr. Vineel Reddy for critical reading of the manuscript and for valuable suggestions. We are thankful to Sandeep Kumar for helping with the mice experiments. Technical assistance provided by Bahadur Singh, Devender, Jeevan and Priti Singh is acknowledged. This work was supported by a research grant from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. PC is grateful to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research India for fellowship (CSIR JRF/SRF).
