Effort to develop vaccines against helminth diseases reviewed.

2003 SEP 3 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The development of vaccines against helminth diseases has been reviewed in a recent issue of the International Journal for Parasitology.

"The control of helminth diseases of people and livestock continues to rely on the widespread use of anti-helminthic drugs. However, concerns with the appearance of drug resistant parasites and the presence of pesticide residues in food and the environment, has given further incentive to the goal of discovering molecular vaccines against these pathogens," researchers in Ireland and the United States report.

"The exponential rate at which gene and protein sequence information is accruing for many helminth parasites requires new methods for the assimilation and analysis of the data and for the identification of molecules capable of inducing immunological protection," said John P. Dalton at Dublin City University and his collaborators in Ireland and the United States. "Some promising vaccine candidates have been discovered, in particular cathepsin L proteases from Fasciola hepatica, aminopeptidases from Haemonchus contortus, and aspartic proteases from schistosomes and hookworms, all of which are secreted into the host tissues or into the parasite intestine where they play important roles in host-parasite interactions."

"Since secreted proteins, in general, are exposed to the immune system of the host they represent obvious candidates at which vaccines could be ...