Live attenuated Leishmania vaccines
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services
InventorsHira L. Nakhasi, Angamuthu Selvapandiyan, Alain Debrabant, Robert C. Duncan, Poonam Salotra, Gannavaram Sreenivas
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Abstract
Targeted disruption of the centrin gene leads to attenuation of growth in Leishmania. Preferred embodiments of the invention provide attenuated strains of Leishmania useful for the preparation of immunogenic preparations including vaccines against a disease caused by infection with a virulent Leishmania strain and as tools for the generation of immunological and diagnostic reagents. Other preferred embodiments provide related immunogenic compositions, methods of generating an immune response, methods for producing a vaccine, and methods of forming attenuated strains of Leishmania.
Claims5
An attenuated strain of Leishmania donovani, wherein both wild-type copies of the single copy gene encoding centrin have been deleted to provide a strain incapable of expressing native centrin protein and having a reduced ability to infect or survive in macrophages in comparison to wild-type strain.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.