Algae-Made Vaccines Targeting Animal Pathogens

Abstract

Several pathogens negatively affect the health of livestock, pets, poultry, and other animals of economic interest. In addition, some of these pathogens cause zoonotic diseases and thus become an interest in human health care. Vaccination is the most attractive alternative to prevent these infectious diseases but its cost is a critical aspect to address proper coverage. Algae species have entered in the race of developing attractive veterinary vaccines, offering the possibility of low cost production vaccines since they are produced in inexpensive media and many species are edible; allowing for the design of oral vaccines not requiring purification or specialized personnel and sterile devices for administration. Algae-based vaccines against the following pathogens have been evaluated in pilot studies: White spot syndrome virus, Avian influenza virus, Foot and mouth disease virus, Taenia solium, Porcine circovirus, and Classical swine fever virus. The algae species used as biofactories include Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Schizochytrium sp., and Dunaliella salina. In general, these algae species have shown a proper biosynthetic capacity to produce functional antigenic proteins. Although the number of the targeted pathogens and the degree of vaccine characterization is still narrow, a perspective for this field is presented in this chapter. Interestingly some companies have adopted this technology, which will with no doubt accelerate the goals of defining and addressing a regulatory framework to achieve approval of algae-made vaccines making them a reality.