Immunity to Leishmania and the rational search for vaccines against canine leishmaniasis.

Abstract

The control of infection byLeishmania infantum (syn. Leishmania chagasi) in dogs is essential to stop the current spread of zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis. The past few years have seen significant advances in achiev-ing efficient immunization of dogs and, more than ever before, an effective vaccine against canine leishmaniasis can now be considered a feasible goal. This article sum-marizes experimental data gathered from recent dog trials aimed at identifying immunological mechanisms implicated in protection against canine infection to dis-cuss their potential to serve as quantitative surrogate markers of immunization and, more importantly, its usefulness to evaluate whether the immunity induced by the vaccine candidate is strong enough to protect against canine leishmaniasis.