Alternative approaches to vaccine delivery

Subunit vaccines under development for malaria utilize a limited number of approaches to delivery. The majority of these deliver recombinant proteins by parenteral injection either alone or as fusions assembling into particles and several are now in clinical trial with varying results. If and when an effective or partially-effective vaccine formulation becomes available in the future, the challenge of producing with an affordable cost of goods and delivering it to a large target population many of who live in remote areas will remain. In addition, the significant safety concerns of appropriate reuse and disposal of needles from the vaccination process will need to be addressed. Therefore, along with the efforts to advance the most promising vaccine formulations through the development pipeline, research is taking place into alternative methods for cheaper vaccine production and easy administration. This chapter will discuss some of these approaches, including transgenic plants and mammals as bioreactors for low cost vaccine production and alternative routes of vaccine delivery such as mucosal immunization.