Traditional vaccines aim to recognize and kill disease-causing bacteria before they colonize the body. But researchers from The State University of New York's University at Buffalo are working to make a vaccine based on disease prevention instead of bacteria eradication.
"With conventional vaccines, the approach has been, 'What bacteria do we want to target and how,'" Charles Jones, PhD, CEO and founder of Abcombi Biosciences, the firm working to commercialize the findings, said in a statement. "Our strategy is to shift the paradigm to which diseases do we want to prevent."
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The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, worked specifically with the bacteria responsible for causing meningitis and pneumonia, which is the leading cause of death in children less than five years old worldwide. Although initially treated with antibiotics like penicillin, concerns about antibiotic resistance have led researchers to turn to vaccinations as a potential measure for targeting pathogenic bacteria. But there are more than 90 strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae, and vaccines generally are only able to target a small percentage of them.
Current vaccines may wipe out strains of bacteria that are good for us, or have no impact at all, which could leave room for other bad bugs to take hold, according to the study authors. Vaccines do this by identifying a coating of sugar surrounding certain pathogens, and the authors suggest their solution would leave that coating at bay, only springing into action when bacterial proteins break through to pose a threat.
Abcombi is currently working toward conducting human trials.
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