Advantages and Disadvantages
Table 1. Advantages And Disadvantages Of Nucleic Acid-Based Immunization
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
- Subunit vaccination with no risk for infection
- Antigen presentation by both MHC class I and class II molecules
- Able to polarise T-cell help toward type 1 or type 2
- Immune response focused only on antigen of interest
- Ease of development and production
- Stability of vaccine for storage and shipping
- Cost-effectiveness
- Obviates need for peptide synthesis, expression and purification of recombinant proteins and the use of toxic adjuvants
- Long-term persistence of immunogen
- In vivo expression ensures protein more closely resembles normal eukaryotic structure, with accompanying post-translational modifications
|
- Limited to protein immunogens (not useful for non-protein based antigens such as bacterial polysaccharides)
- Risk of affecting genes controlling cell growth
- Possibility of inducing antibody production against DNA
- Possibility of tolerance to the antigen (protein) produced
- Potential for atypical processing of bacterial and parasite proteins
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