A promising live attenuated typhoid vaccine candidate strain for mucosal immunization was developed by introducing a deletion in the guaBA locus of pathogenic Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi strain Ty2. The resultant ⌬guaBA mutant, serovar Typhi CVD 915, has a gene encoding resistance to arsenite replacing the deleted sequence within guaBA, thereby providing a marker to readily identify the vaccine strain. CVD 915 was compared in in vitro and in vivo assays with wild-type strain Ty2, licensed live oral typhoid vaccine strain Ty21a, or attenuated serovar Typhi vaccine strain CVD 908-htrA (harboring mutations in aroC, aroD, and htrA). CVD 915 was less invasive than CVD 908-htrA in tissue culture and was more crippled in its ability to proliferate after invasion. In mice inoculated intraperitoneally with serovar Typhi and hog gastric mucin (to estimate the relative degree of attenuation), the 50% lethal dose of CVD 915 (7.7 ؋ 10 7 CFU) was significantly higher than that of wild-type Ty2 (1.4 ؋ 10 2 CFU) and was only slightly lower than that of Ty21a (1. Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi strain Ty21a pioneered the concept that an attenuated strain could be sufficiently well tolerated and protective to gain licensure as a live oral typhoid vaccine (9,27, 32, 46,57). Despite its many positive attributes, Ty21a, which was developed in the early 1970s by chemical mutagenesis of wild-type serovar Typhi strain Ty2 (11), exhibits only modest immunogenicity. Consequently, three or four spaced doses of Ty21a must be administered to confer an adequate level of enduring protection (9,27, 29, 46,57).9Attenuated ⌬aroC ⌬aroD serovar Typhi strain CVD 908 (18) advanced the field by demonstrating that a live oral typhoid vaccine strain could be clinically well tolerated yet highly immunogenic with a single dose (49, 50). However, 50 and 100% of the subjects who ingested, respectively, 10 7 or 10 8 CFU of CVD 908 manifested silent vaccinemias on one or more occasions between days 4 and 8 after vaccination (50). Although these vaccinemias were not associated with adverse clinical consequences and were spontaneously cleared (50), it was deemed desirable to seek a further derivative that did not cause vaccinemias. This was accomplished by introducing a deletion in htrA, which encodes a stress protein that functions as a serine protease (6). Chatfield et al. (6) had shown that serovar Typhimurium strains harboring mutations in htrA were attenuated and could protect orally immunized mice from a challenge that was lethal for unimmunized control mice. Indeed, in phase 1 and 2 clinical trials, a single dose of CVD 908-htrA proved to be well tolerated and immunogenic but, unlike CVD 908, was not associated with silent vaccinemias (52, 53). Two other attenuated serovar Typhi live oral vaccine candidates, ⌬phoP phoQ strain Ty800 and ⌬cya ⌬crp ⌬cdt strain X4073 have also yielded promising results in phase 1 clinical trials (15, 51). Nevertheless, despite the encouraging results observed in clinical trials with these candidate serovar Typhi va...