Airway Delivery of Soluble Mycobacterial Antigens Restores Protective Mucosal Immunity by Single Intramuscular Plasmid DNA Tuberculosis Vaccination: Role of Proinflammatory Signals in the Lung

Protection by parenteral immunization with plasmid DNA vaccines against pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is very modest. In this study, we have investigated the underlying mechanisms for the poor mucosal protective efficacy and the avenues and mechanisms to improve the efficacy of a single i.m. immunization with a monogenic plasmid DNA TB vaccine in a murine model. We show that i.m. DNA immunization fails to elicit accumulation of Ag-specific T …