Saccharomyces as a vaccine against systemic aspergillosis: ‘the friend of man’ a friend again?

Whole glucan particles as a vaccine against systemic coccidioidomycosis

“…During the course of studies on potential vaccines, we found that heat-killed yeast of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (HKY) provided protection against experimental systemic aspergillosis (Liu et al, 2011a;Stevens et al, 2011). Furthermore, we found that HKY induced protection against infection with Candida albicans (Liu et al, 2012a), Cryptococcus grubii (Majumder et al, 2014), Mucor (Luo et al, 2014) and Coccidioides posadasii (Capilla et al, 2009).…”

Fungal Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics

“…Presumably, immunization with S. cerevisiae offers protection against a variety of fungi because it shares with them common polysaccharide epitopes found on its cell wall. Additionally, it may also elicit responses that are cross-reactive to homologous proteins found on pathogenic fungi (Liu et al 2011a). Although protective against many different fungi, HKY is less effective in preventing mortality in models of coccidioidomycosis than a more specific vaccination regimen using formalin-killed Coccidioides immitis spherules (FKS).…”

“…Several studies have evaluated the effectiveness of killed and attenuated fungi as potential vaccines, including S. cerevisiae, which has the potential to protect individuals from the major fungal pathogens. Immunization with heat-killed S. cerevisiae yeasts (HKY) by subcutaneous injection has been shown to be protective against C. albicans (Liu et al 2012a), A. fumigatus (Liu et al 2011a), and the endemic fungus Coccidioides posadasii (Capilla et al 2009). Presumably, immunization with S. cerevisiae offers protection against a variety of fungi because it shares with them common polysaccharide epitopes found on its cell wall.…”

“…At least two strategies, however, take advantage of the common epitopes found in the skeletal framework of the fungal cell wall. One uses killed S. cerevisiae to direct immune cells to recognize common fungal wall polysaccharides including glucans and mannans (Liu et al 2011a). Another universal vaccine design uses b-glucans conjugated to an inactivated version of diphtheria toxin to elicit responses against different pathogenic fungi (Torosantucci et al 2005).…”

Problems of Vaccinal Prevention of Deep Mycoses

“…Недавние исследования показали, что при им-мунизации мышей убитыми прогреванием дрож-жевыми клетками Saccharomyces cerevisiae -heat killed yeasts (HKY) формируется защита против КМ, а также аспергиллеза, кандидоза и криптококко-за [18,20,26]. Авторы предположили, что подоб-ная вакцина является универсальной в отношении микозов.…”