Potential Prophylactic and Therapeutic Vaccines for HSV Infections

The human herpesviruses herpes simplex virus types 1 and 2 (HSV-1 and HSV-2) can cause severe recurrent disease in humans and establish lifelong infection in their hosts. Several antiviral therapies are available to control disease and spread, but these are not completely effective and do not affect latent virus. The need for vaccines for HSV is urgent, both for controlling initial infection and spread of disease as well as to limit recurrences. Several approaches including subunit vaccines, peptide vaccines, live virus vectors and DNA vaccine technology have been used in developing both prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines for HSV and these are reviewed here.