Lactic acid bacteria — promising vaccine vectors: possibilities, limitations, doubts

Summary Gram‐positive, nonpathogenic lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are considered to be promising candidates for the development of novel, safe production and delivery systems of heterologous proteins. Recombinant LAB strains were shown to elicit specific systemic and mucosal immune responses against selected antigens. For this reason, this group of bacteria is considered as a potential replacement of classical, often pathogenic, attenuated microbial carriers. Mucosal administration of recombinant LAB, especially via the best explored and universal oral route, offers many advantages in comparison to systemic inoculation, and is attractive from the immunological and practical point of view. Research aimed at designing efficient, mucosally applied vaccines in combination with improved immunization efficiency, monitoring of in vivo antigen production, determination of optimal dose for vaccination, strain selection and characterization is a priority in modern vaccinology. This paper summarizes and organizes the available knowledge on the application of LAB as live oral vaccine vectors. It constitutes a valuable source of general information for researchers interested in mucosal vaccine development and constructing LAB strains with vaccine potential.