Simian adenoviruses as vaccine vectors
Morris S., Sebastian S., Spencer AJ., Gilbert SC.
Replication incompetent human adenovirus serotype 5 has been extensively used as a delivery vehicle for gene therapy proteins and infectious disease antigens. These vectors infect replicating and non-replicating cells, have a broad tissue tropism, elicit high immune responses and are easily purified to high titres. However, the utility of HAdV-C5 vectors as potential vaccines is limited due to pre-existing immunity within the human population which significantly reduces the immunogenicity of HAdV-C5 vaccines. In recent years, adenovirus vaccine development has focused on simian-derived adenoviral vectors which have the desirable vector characteristics of HAdV-C5 but with negligible seroprevalence in the human population. Here, we discuss recent advances in simian adenovirus vaccine vector development and evaluate current research specifically focusing on clinical trial data.