Vaccines Against Non-Infectious, Non-Cancer Novel Targets

This review examines the range of vaccines designed to treat non-infectious and non-cancer diseases and conditions. In the main, the approach is to develop high antigen-specific, neutralizing antibody titers. Thus, vaccines have been developed to target key fertility regulating proteins in order to control conception and hormone-induced conditions, while proteinopathy in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease have resulted in several vaccines undergoing clinical trial. For other brain-targeted conditions such as addictions, antibodies have been raised against the small chemical entities to prevent them crossing the blood–brain barrier and to interrupt pleasure effects. One area where innovations are being applied to increase antibody-neutralizing effects is in the allergy field. The examples so far detailed mainly use antibody induction against direct targets; however, with a better understanding of interactions of the immune system, indirect targets are also being sought for treatment of other conditions such as stress and depression. This highlights that improvements are needed to increase our knowledge of immune responses, antigen discovery, and the mechanisms of action. This has allowed new tools to drive vaccine innovation, and examples of state-of-the-art technologies are outlined.