The Well-Developed Mucosal Immune Systems of Birds and Mammals Allow for Similar Approaches of Mucosal Vaccination in Both Types of Animals

The mucosal immune system is a compartmentalized part of the immune system that provides local immunity in the mucosa of the respiratory, gastrointestinal, and digestive tracts. It possesses secondary lymphoid tissues, such as Peyer’s patches, in the gut that contain immune cells, such as T, B, and dendritic cells. Once the cells of the mucosal immune system are stimulated by luminal antigens, including microorganisms, they infiltrate into diffuse areas of mucosal tissues (e.g., respiratory mucosa and lamina propria of intestinal villi) and exhibit immune effector functions. Inducing the antigen-specific immune responses in mucosal tissues by mucosal vaccination would be an ideal strategy for not only humans, but also livestock and poultry, to protect against infectious diseases occurring in mucosal tissues (e.g., pneumonia and diarrhea). Infectious diseases cause huge economic losses in the livestock and poultry industries. Since most infectious diseases occur in mucosal tissues, vaccines that are capable of inducing immune responses in mucosal tissues are in high need. In this article, we discuss the current understanding of mucosal immunity in livestock and poultry, and recent progress in the development of mucosal vaccines and nutritional supplementation.