Immunization of mucosal surfaces has become an attractive route of vaccine
delivery because of its ability to induce mucosal immunity. Although variou
s methods of inducing mucosal immunity are being developed, our laboratory
has focused on developing adenoviruses as replication-competent and replica
tion-incompetent vectors. The present report will summarize our progress in
sequencing the entire bovine adenovirus-3 genome and identifying regions w
hich can be deleted and subsequently used as insertion sites for foreign ge
nes in developing recombinant viral vaccines. Using these recombinant virus
es, we demonstrated the 'proof-of-principle' in developing mucosal immunity
and, more importantly, inducing protection against bovine herpes virus in
a natural host-cattle. Finally, we demonstrated that immunity and protectio
n occurred even in animals that had pre-existing antibodies to the vector.
(C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.