Bacterial vaccines to prevent and treat multi-drug resistant infections

German Bou Arevalo

Fundación Profesor Novoa Santos, Spain

Research
Platform for generating effective live bacterial vaccines composed of attenuated strains. It will focus on the development of effective vaccines against nosocomial infections (NIs) and other health-care associated infections (HAIs), which are multidrug-resistant (MDR). Their impact implies prolonged hospital stay, long-term disability, and deaths. In addition, S.aureus is the main etiological pathogen for bovine mastitis. Other animal bacterial pathogens can benefit for our system. In all cases, there is a clear need for novel effective strategies to combat these infectious diseases.

Aim
To develop a universal platform for bacterial attenuation to generate prophylactic live vaccines. This approach can target virtually any type of bacteria.

Problem to Solve
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria cause substantial healthcare expenditures, unnecessary deaths and ecomonic loss in milk and food production worldwide. Accordingly, the WHO has highlighted the loss of effective antibiotics as a crucial problem that will undermine our ability to properly fight infectious diseases.

Innovation
The strategy represents a pioneering approach for virulence attenuation that would facilitate vaccine production. The platform entails a simple creation of auxotrophy to convert any bacteria into an attenuated microorganism that can be used as a vaccine.

Level of Innovation
The proposed approach has added value with respect to classical vaccines, i.e. live-attenuated or inactivated. The platform developed here include whole-cell presentation of antigens, rapid and strong immune response without extracting and purifying proteins, with no safety concerns on the possibility of complete inactivation. In addition, the pilot vaccine prototypes already developed for anti-P.aeruginosa, anti-A. Baumannii, anti-S. aureus and anti-K. pneumoniae represent a novel and realistic approach to tackle NIs, NAIs, community-acquiered infections and cattle mastitis.