Gene-based vaccines to combat bacterial diseases, hurdles and opportunities’

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• Professor Christine Rollier, Professor of Vaccinology, University of Surrey
• Friday 15 November 2024, 13:00-14:00
• LT2.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Fiona Roby.

Canceled - to be re-scheduled

With the recent success of adenoviral vaccines against Ebola and SARS -CoV-2, the potential of this platform in the fight against outbreak pathogens is being realised. This technology has proven impact in high income countries and is also suitable for large scale manufacture and use in low-and-middle income countries, as demonstrated by the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine against SARS -CoV-2. The potential of viral-vectors to induce T Helper type 1 and high antibody responses in humans makes the use of this approach attractive in efforts to combat the disease and disability caused by bacterial pathogens. However, the case for their use in bacterial vaccines is less clear: the expression of a bacterial protein in a eukaryotic cell may impact on the antigen localization, induce unwanted glycosylation or affect protein conformation, and this is also true if using the mRNA vaccine platform. The potential and challenges of adenoviral vectors was explored against two bacterial diseases, capsular group B meningococcus and the plague. While all antigens and combinations were able to induce high antibody responses after a single dose immunisation in mice, not all were able to induce functional antibodies. We show that a subset of outer membrane proteins from Gram-negative bacteria can be incorporated into gene-based vectors for novel vaccine development. While our work highlights the challenges inherent in developing novel vaccines using this technology and can be applied to mRNA, the successful progression of two novel bacterial vaccines to clinical development underlines the potential of these platforms for vaccine development against bacterial diseases.

This talk is part of the Departmental Seminar Programme, Department of Veterinary Medicine series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Cambridge Immunology
• Cambridge Infectious Disease
• Cambridge Infectious Diseases
• Departmental Seminar Programme, Department of Veterinary Medicine
• LT2
• Vet School Seminars

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