Immunity to α-Gal: towards a single-antigen pan-vaccine to control major infectious diseases

Recent developments point at the possibility of using the immunity to α-Gal to control infectious diseases. During evolution, humans lost the ability to synthesize the carbohydrate α-Gal that resulted in an almost unique capacity to produce high antibody titers against α-Gal. Collectively, these results suggest that the way forward to control major infectious diseases is the development and testing of probiotic-based vaccines containing bacteria with membrane-exposed α-Gal.Peer Reviewe