ORAL AND NASAL IMMUNIZATION WITH MICROENCAPSULATED CLINICALLY RELEVANT PROTEINS

Recently, much interest has been focused on the significance of induci ng not only systemic immunity, but also effective local immunity at su sceptible mucosal surfaces. A new field of mucosal immunity has been e stablished as information accumulates on mucosa-associated lymphoid ti ssue and on its role in both local and systemic immune responses. This article focuses directly on the use of microparticulate carriers to a chieve effective mucosal immunization. The immunology of the mucosal i mmune system has been comprehensively reviewed elsewhere, and as such only key issues in conjunction with recent experiments which relate to mucosal immunization with microparticulate carriers will be addressed here.