In vitro vaccine

Synthetic biology promises a vaccine against chlamydia

Marina Astvatsaturyan, Echo of Moscow

A group of researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of the USA and Synthetic Genomics, Inc. reported in the Journal of Biochemistry on a method for obtaining a key component of a vaccine that prevents infection with chlamydia outside a living cell.

Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted infectious disease caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis. The infection is often asymptomatic, but if left untreated, chlamydia can cause chronic diseases such as infertility, pelvic inflammation and blindness. Antibiotic treatment is effective, but after it there is a high probability of re-infection, which is more difficult to cure.

Vaccines interact with the immune system, activating it to protect against the disease. They contain antigens, usually purified proteins similar to the Major Outer Membrane Protein (MOMP) of the pathogen against which the vaccine should work.

After vaccination, an antigen-specific immune response develops that will protect against a real infection, and the antigen that managed to cause it is called immunogenic. However, the creation of such antigens in the laboratory is not always successful, because it is very important to get properly folded, or twisted, proteins, and with complex proteins, such as the main protein of the outer membrane of chlamydia, it is not easy.

The authors of the new vaccine in their article describe their patented method of obtaining a functional immunogenic main protein of the outer membrane of chlamydia using lipoprotein nanoparticles.

Illustration to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lab team wins National Institutes of Health two-year grant to develop chlamydia vaccine – VM.

The unique lipoprotein nanoparticles in question are capable of self-assembly and serve as a framework for maintaining the main protein of the outer membrane in a functional state, that is, in the correct conformation. The protein itself is obtained in a reaction mixture with all the necessary components, including RNA polymerase, ribosomes and other attributes of protein biosynthesis isolated from E. coli bacteria. This extracellular method is much more effective than previous attempts to obtain chlamydial antigens inside bacterial cells.

"With this article, we have shown the possibility of recreating a therapeutic protein with a very complex structure from simple biological components, and this is a promising result," lead author Matthew Coleman from Livermore said in a comment to Laboratory Equipment.

Ahead of the trial of an experimental vaccine on mice, and another use of synthetic antigen may be getting rid of chlamydia in a declining population of Australian koalas due to this infection.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  26.09.2017