Vaccines: An ongoing promise?

Over the past decade, intensive research has focused on developing a vaccin e therapy for Helicobacter pylori. Substantial unresolved questions cloud t he current approach, and the development of a vaccine against this unique o rganism has proved very challenging. Many candidate vaccines have been test ed in animal models. The immunogenicity and the safety of some vaccine form ulations have been recently evaluated through clinical trials, and the effi cacy of these vaccine therapies in humans will be determined in the near fu ture. This article will provide an overview of the current knowledge of nat ural and vaccine-induced immune responses to H. pylori infection. It will a lso review past vaccine successes and failures in animal models and the lim ited experience to date in using vaccine therapy in humans. Several obstacl es to H. pylori vaccine development efforts along with the future direction of these efforts will be discussed. Copyright (C) 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel .