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British researchers have taken an early step towards a broad-coverage pneumonia vaccine using reverse vaccinology, a genome-first approach to vaccine design.
Reverse vaccinology screens a pathogen's whole genome computationally to predict surface-exposed or secreted proteins as vaccine targets, instead of starting by culturing the organism.
The term was coined by Rino Rappuoli in 2000 and was first applied against serogroup B Neisseria meningitidis.
The candidate vaccine ZPY-CpG-Ch combines three pneumococcal proteins with CpG and chitosan adjuvants and gave broader cross-serotype protection than Prevnar-13 in mouse models.
Conventional vaccinology grows the pathogen and picks antigens from what can be cultured. Reverse vaccinology starts from the genome, predicts in silico which proteins are surface-exposed or secreted, then expresses, screens and tests the best candidates.
Simple Analogy: Reading the blueprint to find the doors, instead of walking round the building.
Rino Rappuoli coins the term 'reverse vaccinology' for vaccine design driven by whole-genome analysis.
Used against serogroup B Neisseria meningitidis (MenB), a target conventional methods had not cracked.
Science Advances publishes the University of Liverpool team's ZPY-CpG-Ch broad-coverage pneumococcal vaccine candidate.
GS Paper 3 > Science and Technology > Biotechnology and developments in health
General Awareness > Science and Technology in the news
Genome-driven vaccine design that predicts antigens computationally before any laboratory expression or animal testing.
A variant within a bacterial species distinguished by its surface antigens; S. pneumoniae has 101 known serotypes.
A substance added to a vaccine to strengthen and shape the immune response — here CpG oligonucleotide and chitosan.