Vaccine Development for Herpes Simplex Viruses
A special issue of Vaccines (ISSN 2076-393X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2020) | Viewed by 36658
Special Issue Editors
Interests: human viruses; delivery systems; vaccines; preclinical development; immune metabolisms
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: herpes simplex; in vitro molecular studies; virus–host interaction pathways
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
As you are already aware, herpes simplex viruses type 1 and type 2 (HSV-1 and HSV-2) are highly prevalent pathogens transmitted by direct contact, including sexual and mouth-to-genital transmission, which cause both lytic infection of epithelial cells and latent infection in sensory ganglia, which reactivate periodically. Recurrent productive infections are responsible for several painful clinical illnesses, including cold sores, keratitis, blepharitis, meningitis, encephalitis, genital infections, and overt disease and severe sequelae in neonatal and immune-compromised patients. Such recurrences are usually localized but can be generalized when the host is immune-compromised. In addition, roughly 1% of all HSV infected persons experience subclinical reactivation on any given day, allowing unknown spreading of virus infection. Herpes outbreaks make people more susceptible to other sexually transmitted infections and have facilitated a large proportion of HIV acquisition globally. Moreover, repeated reactivation of latent HSV-1 in the brain is considered a major risk for AD pathogenesis.
Current drugs are efficacious only in replicating HSV without any effect on latent virus, on its reactivation nor on preventing virus spread. Thus, disease caused by HSVs represent significant public health burdens.
The only means to prevent HSV infections and virus spreading and reactivation from latency is the development of an efficacious therapeutic and/or prophylactic vaccine. However, there is still an incomplete understanding of the immune response pathways elicited by HSV after initial mucosal infection, the correlates of protections, and how to prevent colonization and invasion of the dorsal root ganglia and nervous system. While no HSV licensed vaccine is available yet, there is the will to fill these gaps by rational design of HSV prophylactic and/or therapeutic vaccines and the choice of the proper adjuvant to elicit protective response.
To achieve a more extensive understanding of recent scientific knowledge and current trends in HSV vaccine development, this Special issue is focused on the recent scientific and technical progresses made in this field. Based on your extensive knowledge and experience, we invite you to contribute with an original report, original observation or review, to highlight (i) correlates of protection, (ii) immune pathways after primary infection, (iii) mechanisms of colonization and invasion of the nervous system, and (iv) recent advances in novel prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines.
Dr. Antonella Caputo
Dr. Peggy Marconi
Guest Editors
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