Leishmaniasis vaccine

[6] "Leishmanization" is the practice of inoculation with live Leishmania to induce mild cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) to prevent future dangerous infection.

[8] A 2015 paper claimed that the development and use of a vaccine would be the best way to eliminate leishmaniasis from South Asia.

[11] There are a series of challenges with explanations in molecular biology which explain the difficulty of vaccine development.

[13] There is also a basic lack of scientific understanding of how an antiparasitic vaccine should generate and maintain immunological memory during parasitic infection.

[13] The development of a vaccine using CRISPR-Cas9 technology was published in 2020[14] which showed that inoculation with a live attenuated Leishmania major strain induces durable protection, analogous to leishmanization.

Another gene deletion mutant was created in a Leishmania mexicana strain in 2022, showing complete inhibition of the typical cutaneous lesions in mouse models thanks to a diminished induction of the Th2 cytokines.

[22] Preclinical work with genetically modified live attenuated parasite vaccines was conducted in the 1990s and 2000s, as did work with synthetic peptides, recombinant proteins, glycoproteins and glycolipids from leishmania species, and naked DNA.