Summary
The treatment of atherosclerosis is currently based on lipid lowering in combination
with anti-inflammatory therapies that slow the progression of atherosclerosis. Still,
we are not able to fully inhibit the formation or progression of atherosclerotic lesions.
A very effective strategy in other disease pathologies is vaccination, in which the
body is challenged with the culprit protein or micro-organism in order to create a
highly specific humoral immune-response. Immunisation can typically be divided into
active or passive immunisation. Active immunisation occurs naturally when the body
is exposed to certain microbes or antigens, but also artificially in the case of vaccination.
Exposure to a microbe or antigen will result in the production of (antigen specific)
antibodies. Passive immunisation is defined as the transfer of humoral immunity (as
a result of antibody transfer). Another mechanism to ensure immune-protection is tolerance
induction. Immune tolerance occurs naturally to prevent immune responses to ‘self-antigens’,
but can also be induced to non-self antigens. Acquired tolerance to foreign antigens
is accompanied by suppression of cellular and/or humoral immune response to the introduced
antigen. In its most effective way, vaccination can result in a lifelong protection
against the targeted pathology, and therefore the development of an atherosclerosis-specific
vaccination is of high importance in the future prevention of atherosclerosis. One
of the difficulties in developing effective vaccination strategies for atherosclerosis
is the selection of a specific antigen to target. So far vaccination strategies have
been based on targeting of lipidantigens, inflammation-derived antigens, and recently
cell-based vaccination strategies have been employed; but also the cardiovascular
‘side-effects’ of infection-based vaccines are worthy of our attention. This review
describes the current status-quo on classical antibody associated vaccination strategies
but also includes promising immunemodulation approaches that may lead to a clinical
application.
Keywords Atherosclerosis - vaccination - immunology