The promise of nucleic acid vaccines

Establishing the effective use of 'naked' nucleic acids as vaccines would u ndoubtedly be one of the most important advances in the history of vaccinol ogy. While nucleic acids show much promise for use as Vaccine vectors in ex perimental animals, not a single naked nucleic acid vector has been approve d for use in humans, indeed, data from human clinical trials is scant: nucl eic acid vaccines have not been clearly demonstrated to have any convincing efficacy in the prevention or treatment of infectious disease or cancer. H ere we illustrate possible mechanisms underlying effective nucleic acid vac cination. we focus on progress that has been made in the improvement of the ir function. Additionally, we identify promising new strategies and try to forecast future developments that could lead to the real success of nucleic acid vaccines in the prevention and treatment of human disease.