The present and future of rabies vaccine in animals

Abstract

An effective strategy for preventing rabies consists of controlling rabies in the host reservoir with vaccination. Rabies vaccine has proven to be the most effective weapon for coping with this fatal viral zoonotic disease of warm-blooded animals, including human. Natural rabies infection of an individual is always associated with exposure to rabid animals, and the duration of clinical signs can vary from days to months. The incubation period for the disease depends on the site of the bite, severity of injury, and the amount of infecting virus at the time of exposure. The mortality of untreated cases in humans is 100%. Over the last 100 years, various rabies vaccines have been developed and used to prevent or control rabies in animals, such as modified live vaccine, inactivated rabies vaccine, and oral modified live vaccine. These have proved safe and efficacious worldwide. New-generation rabies vaccines, including recombinant rabies virus-based vaccines, vectored vaccines, DNA-based vaccines, and plant vaccines, have been explored to overcome the limitations of conventional rabies vaccines. This article discusses current and next-generation rabies vaccines in animals.

Rabies, a Vaccine Preventable Disease: Current Status, Epidemiology, Pathogenesis, Prevention and Control With Special Reference to India

“…Also, the advancement in science in the recent years has made momentous progress in the design of vectors suited for gene delivery of the virus components. However, drawbacks related to poor immunogenicity and requirement of larger doses of DNA in animals remain as a fathomless issue in rabies DNA vaccination (Yang et al, 2013).…”

“…Glycoprotein expressed on the surface of the vaccinia virus, canary pox virus (Yang et al, 2013), canine adenovirus (Zhang et al 2008), chimeric lyssavirus glycoprotein with segments from Rabies virus and Mokola virus (Badrane et al, 2001) are the recombinant vaccines which provide immunization against more than one lyssavirus. DNA vaccination with glycoprotein cloned into a plasmid vector has also been developed as vaccines against rabies.…”

“…Oral Rabies Vaccine (ORV) laden baits have been successfully established for red, Arctic, and gray foxes; coyotes, raccoon dogs, raccoons, skunks, and domestic dogs (Yang et al, 2013). ORV was explicated to vaccinate free-ranging wild animals in geographically large enzootic areas, to subjugate the development and extent of a rabies epizootic, or to establish a rabies-free buffer zone (Muller et al, 2001).…”

Rabies vaccines: Current status and prospects for development

“…Rabies vaccines based on different adenovirus strains are already applied for animal vaccination [32]. Some of them are currently undergoing wide scale trials in Canada and the United States as bait preparations for oral vaccination of wild skunks and raccoons [33,34]. The type 2 canine ade novirus (CAV2) vector was used in a double action vaccine that protects dogs from both adenovirus infec tion and rabies [35].…”

Current Developments and Future Prospects for Plant-Made Biopharmaceuticals Against Rabies

“…There are several possibilities currently under development to address the need for new rabies vaccines and passive immunity therapies. Reports describing the current trends on developing new preventive and therapeutic therapies against rabies have been published [13,[18][19][20][21]. In general, these approaches comprise (i) protein subunit vaccines, which can be produced in microbial systems and often require extensive purification to eliminate toxins and have limited biosynthetic capacity; (ii) viral vector vaccines, which are produced in chick embryos or mammalian cell cultures and, although effective, frequently induce side effects and are of expensive production; and (iii) monoclonal antibodies, produced in mammalian cells, which are expensive and also require extensive purification.…”