title: Therapeutic vaccines for leishmaniasis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Numerous therapeutic strategies are used to treat leishmaniasis. The treatment of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is solely depends on antimonate derivatives with safety issues and questionable efficacy and there is no fully effective modality to treat CL caused by Leishmania tropica and Leishmania braziliensis.
  
  
  METHODS
  There is no prophylactic vaccine available against any form of leishmaniasis. Immunotherapy for CL has a long history; immunotherapy trials of first and second generation vaccines showed promising results. The current article briefly covers the prophylactic vaccines and explains different immunotherapy strategies that have been used to treat leishmaniasis. This paper does not include experimental vaccines and only lays emphasis on human trials and those vaccines which reached human trials.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Immunotherapy is currently used to successfully treat several disorders; Low cost, limited side effects and no possibility to develop resistance make immunotherapy a valuable choice especially for infectious disease with chemotherapy problems. Efforts are needed to explore the immunological surrogate marker(s) of cure and protection in leishmaniasis and overcome the difficulties in standardization of crude Leishmania vaccines. One of the reasons for anti-leishmaniasis vaccine failure is lack of an appropriate adjuvant. So far, not enough attention has been paid to develop vaccines for immunotherapy of leishmaniasis.
authors: Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Center for Research and Training in Skin Diseases and Leprosy , Tehran , Iran ali.khamesipour@gmail.com.
authors: Ali
authors: A
authors: Khamesipour
mesh_terms: D000276:Adjuvants, Immunologic / Q000008:administration & dosage; D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D007155:Immunologic Factors / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000276:immunology; D007167:Immunotherapy / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends*; D007896:Leishmaniasis / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D054332:Leishmaniasis Vaccines / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000276:immunology; D016773:Leishmaniasis, Cutaneous / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control
chemical_list: D000276:Adjuvants, Immunologic; D007155:Immunologic Factors; D054332:Leishmaniasis Vaccines
keywords: leishmaniasis immunotherapy; treatment of leishmaniasis; vaccine against leishmaniasis