Vaccine strategies to overcome maternal antibody mediated inhibition of measles vaccine

A vaccine that is effective in the presence of maternally derived virus neutralizing antibodies and can be administered successfully at an early age, would be favoured over the presently used live attenuated measles vaccines. With the advent of new molecular and immunological techniques, several options for the development of new generation vaccines, fulfilling these criteria, have arisen. We have recently evaluated the efficacy of recombinant vaccinia virus- and iscom-based candidate vaccines, presenting the F and H proteins of measles virus, in macaques with passively transferred virus neutralizing macaque antibodies. The data indicate that the further exploration of the potential of iscom based measles vaccines should be encouraged. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.