Review Special Issue Series: Recent Advances in Live Vaccines against Protozoan Parasites

Dear Colleagues,

Many of the most important veterinary and human diseases are caused by protozoan parasites. In particular, intracellular parasites are difficult to handle because they usually remain for long periods of time in the host or cause life-long or chronic infections that may affect both animal and human public health. In addition to being difficult to treat, the development of efficient and safe vaccines has proven a challenge for most of them. Indeed, it has long been proved that live vaccines are the best option to elicit protection, although there are important limitations in terms of biosafety, long-term storage and potential for reversion. In this sense, the advent of cutting-edge molecular techniques in the last decade has provided a useful opportunity to perform trials with genetically modified organisms that can have potential for use as live vaccines while avoiding some or all of their drawbacks.

In this Special Issue we would like to focus on the development, characterization, field trials and efficacy tests of live vaccines developed for protozoan parasites affecting animals and humans, with a special interest in, but not limited to, those related to apicomplexan parasites and/or with zoonotic potential. To this end, we invite you to submit an original research or review article to this Special Issue. The following topics are intended to serve as guidance, and other related subjects are welcome.

1. Vaccines against intracellular parasites (e.g., apicomplexan parasites);
2. Vaccines against extracellular parasites (e.g., flagellates, ciliates);
3. Vaccines using low-virulence strains of protozoan parasites isolated from field samples;
4. Vaccines using genetically modified organisms of protozoan parasites (knockout, exogenous expression of heterologous proteins/antigens, etc.), with a special interest in CRISPR/Cas9 techniques;
5. Vaccines against diseases caused by protozoan parasites that are transmitted to humans through animal products (meat, milk, eggs, etc.)—One health approach.

Please consider that the submitted manuscripts should meet these guidelines:

(1) Word count should be more than 3000 words in the main text;

(2) Manuscripts should cite the most recently published research;

(3) Manuscripts should comprehensively summarize the current hot topics.

Vaccines will provide full support for long reviews (5000 or more words in the main text) of high quality. For more detailed information, please do not hesitate to contact the Vaccines Office (vaccines@mdpi.com).

We look forward to your interesting manuscripts; do not hesitate to contact us should you require further information.

Dr. David Arranz-Solís
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vaccines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.