International conference on Human Papillomavirus
Chicago, USA
Kwang Poo Chang
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, USA
Title: Photodynamically inactivated Leishmania for safe and effective delivery of vaccines for immunotherapy of infectious and malignant diseases
Biography
Biography: Kwang Poo Chang
Abstract
A universal platform is under development to deliver multi-valent vaccines by using Leishmania. These are trypanosomatid protozoa, which naturally infect dendritic cells and parasitize macrophages exclusively as their host cells. The molecular attributes of these parasites are exploitable for homing natural and transgenically introduced vaccines to these antigen-presenting cells (APC). The efficacy of vaccine delivery by this APC-homing platform can be substantially preserved by using oxidatively photo-inactivated Leishmania to ascertain their safety. This is referred to as photodynamic vaccination, which has been shown to safely and effectively deliver naturally occurring vaccines of Leishmania against experimental visceral leishmaniasis. High capacity of Leishmania of transcription/translation activities makes this platform particularly attractive for expressing multiple transgenes as vaccines for immunotherapy against heterogeneous viral infections and tumors.