Is immunotherapy of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) feasible?
PCP is a classic opportunistic infection which causes significant morbidity and mortality among immunocompromised patients, especially those with AIDS. Passive immunization has been successful in the prevention or treatment of several infections, including some in immunodeficient individuals. Active immunization to prevent opportunistic infections in a susceptible patient is clinically untested and would present significant challenges to vaccine development. Both passive and active immunization has been used, with varying degrees of success, in immunosuppressed animal models of PCP. This presentation will focus on some of the special problems presented by P.carinii in terms of developing immunotherapy for PCP, such as identification of critical antigens, antigenic variation, and especially the observation that the host response to immunization with P.carinii is restricted to the serotype or strain of P.carinii used to immunize. This latter observation raises the particular concern of s
