Plant-based vaccines against the human immunodeficiency virus

The spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has evolved in an alarming manner in terms of human mortality and morbidity, and thus development of an effective and affordable vaccine is a priority to fight this viral disease. As candidate vaccines assessed in clinical trials have shown limited efficacies, efforts to test new candidates capable of inducing strong and neutralizing humoral and cellular responses are underway. This chapter presents a general overview of vaccine candidates produced in plant systems, focusing on the most advanced and promising approaches. This group of candidates comprise strategies targeting structural (Env, Gag) and early non-structural HIV-1 proteins (Rev, Tat, and Nef), which have been expressed in plant tissues using a variety of expression approaches. A number of plant-based vaccines are in preclinical evaluation trials with promising results in terms of immunogenicity.