DNA Vaccination

There is increasing recognition that the unique antigenicities of the different stages of the Plasmodium spp. life cycle, the requirement for distinct immune mechanisms targeting these different stages, the immense allelic variation of parasites in the field, and the genetic heterogeneity of the target population pose enormous obstacles to the development of a vaccine against malaria. It is likely that an efficacious vaccine will need to induce different immune responses against multiple targets expressed at distinct stages of the parasite’s life cycle (i.e., a multivalent, multistage, multiimmune response vaccine) (1 ). However, how vaccines will be designed to produce protective broad-ranging immune responses has not been obvious based on conventional vaccine delivery systems.