Bacterial immunotherapy is a therapeutic strategy that uses bacteria or bacterial derivatives to modulate the body’s immune response to an infectious agent(s).
Bacterial immunotherapy consists of an antigenic preparation capable of inducing a specific and active immunity in a patient. This immune response includes the induction of the innate and adaptive (cellular and humoral) mechanisms of the immune system.
Within bacterial immunotherapy there are two types of vaccines:
Bacterial vaccines: Suspension of inactivated bacteria from collection strains, determined by a specialist. In Spain, they stopped being marketed in January 2018, being replaced by autovaccines.
- Autovaccines: This is an inactivated microbial suspension from the patient’s own sample.
- Autovaccination: Is a form of medical treatment that involves the preparation of a vaccine using the patient’s own biological material. In this process, a sample of tissue, body fluids or other biological substances is taken from the individual, and a personalised vaccine is made from this sample. The idea is to use the patient’s own biological material to generate a specific immune response against certain diseases or medical conditions.
Bibliography:
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Schreibelt G, Tel J, Sliepen KH, Benitez-Ribas D, Figdor CG, Adema GJ. Toll-like receptor expression and function in human dendritic cell subsets: implications for dendritic cell-based anti-cancer immunotherapy. Cancer Immunol Immunother. 2010 Jul;59(7):1573-82.
