DNA Vaccine and the CNS Axonal Regeneration

Vaccines have been considered in treating many CNS degenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), Huntington's disease (HD), epilepsy, multiple sclerosis (MS), spinal cord injury (SCI), and stroke. DNA vaccines have emerged as novel therapeutic agents because of the simplicity of their generation and application. Myelin components such as NOGO, MAG and OMGP are known to trigger demyelinating autoimmunity and to prevent axonal regeneration. For these reasons DNA vaccines encoding NOGO, MAG and OMGP, and fragments thereof, make them suitable vehicles for treatment of SCIs and MS. We need to obtain a deeper understanding of the immunologic mechanisms underlying the neuroprotective immunity to optimize the design of DNA vaccines for their use in clinical setting. In this review, we discuss recent findings suggesting that DNA vaccines hold a promising future for the treatment of axonal degeneration and demyelination.