Fungus-fighting vaccine

On page 597, Torosantucci and colleagues describe a novel vaccine with the potential to confer protection against multiple fungal pathogens. In mice, the vaccine induced protective immunity against Candida albicans and Aspergillus fumigatus, both common fungal pathogens that prey on immunocompromised individuals.

Effective antifungal therapy can be hampered by drug toxicity and acquired resistance. A therapeutic or prophylactic vaccine might circumvent these problems, but none are commercially available. β-glucan, a polysaccharide component of all pathogenic fungal cell walls, is an attractive antigenic target for vaccine development as it is critical for survival and is not expected to readily mutate in response to immune pressure—a common problem for vaccination against highly mutable proteins such as the HIV envelope protein.

In their study, Torosantucci and colleagues used laminarin, a well-characterized β-glucan from the brown alga...