Evaluating proteins on Meningitis B bacteria for use in a vaccine
Professor John Heckels, University of Southampton
During previous work funded by Meningitis UK, Professor Heckels identified several new Meningitis B proteins (antigens) that could, potentially, be used in a vaccine. This project aims to select the most promising antigens and combine them in a vaccine, which will be tested for its ability to protect against a wide range of group B (and other) meningococcal strains.
The development of a fully effective vaccine against infections caused by all group B meningococcal strains remains the critical goal for prevention of meningococcal meningitis and septicaemia. The recent announcement of one potential multicomponent vaccine is encouraging but there is likely to be a continuing unmet need for a vaccine effective against all strains.
Vaccines work by using a harmless fragment of an infectious agent to “trick” the immune system to produce protective antibodies as it would during an infection, so protecting against further infection. To develop such vaccines requires the identification of the few individual bacterial components (antigens), from many hundreds, which have the ability to produce effective immunity. It is known that most people develop immunity to meningococcal infection they become colonised and carry meningococci in their nasopharynx.
Professor Heckels has previously established a unique collection of matched sera from individuals before and after they became carriers, together with the colonising strains. During work supported by Meningitis UK, Professor Heckels identified seven such antigens and began the task of producing them in pure form for vaccine studies. One antigen has been purified, incorporated into a vaccine formulation and used for immunisation. The antigen induced protective immunity against the homologous immunising strain and preliminary results suggest this will be effective against other serogroup B strains. However, a final vaccine is likely to require a number of components to be effective against a wide range of strains
This project aims to evaluate the ability of the remaining individual antigens to induce protective immunity against a wide range of meningococci, to select the most promising antigens and combine them in a multicomponent formulation. Professor Heckels will test this vaccine for its ability to induce protective immunity against a wide range of group B (and other) meningococcal strains.
This project could generate information that would lead to a highly effective vaccine that would protect against a wide range of group B (and other) meningococcal strains.
This project is due to start in May 2012.
Outcomes will be shown here once the project is complete.
The vaccine potential of meningococcal proteins identified by immuno-proteomics
Professor John Heckels, University of Southampton
During previous work funded by Meningitis UK, Professor Heckels identified several new Meningitis B proteins (antigens) that could, potentially, be used in a vaccine. This project aims to select the most promising antigens and combine them in a vaccine, which will be tested for its ability to protect against a wide range of group B (and other) meningococcal strains.
The development of a fully effective vaccine against infections caused by all serogroup B meningococcal strains remains the critical goal for prevention of meningococcal meningitis and septicaemia. During previous work funded by Meningitis UK, Professor Heckels and his team used proteomics and immunoproteomics to identify nine novel proteins as potential vaccine antigens. They expressed and purified three and demonstrated that they induce a bactericidal immune response.
This project will involve the expression, purification and formulation for immunisation of the remaining proteins. All nine candidate vaccines will then be ranked by (a) defining the extent of any sequence diversity of all the candidate vaccine proteins across a wide range of Neisseria strains (b) determining their level of expression the strains and (c) determining the heterologous bactericidal activity of the antisera against the strains with greatest extent of sequence variation. Professor Heckels will use this information to select the most promising proteins as constituents of a multi-component vaccine.
In summary, this project will draw to a close the analyses of the antigens, identified by Professor Heckels’ proteomics and immuno-proteomics studies, for their vaccine potential. This will identify the most promising protein antigens for a multi-component Meningitis B vaccine (or individual proteins that may be considered for incorporation into other multi-component Meningitis B vaccines), for potential future clinical trials.
This project is due to start in May 2012.
Outcomes will be shown here once the project is complete.
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