A low-cost recombinant glycoconjugate vaccine confers immunogenicity and protection against enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli infections in mice.

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is the primary etiologic agent of traveler's diarrhea and a major cause of diarrheal disease and death worldwide, especially in infants and young children. Despite significant efforts over the past several decades, an affordable vaccine that appreciably decreases mortality and morbidity associated with ETEC infection among children under the age of 5 years remains an unmet aspirational goal. Here, we describe robust, cost-effective biosynthetic routes that leverage glycoengineered strains of non-pathogenic E. coli or their cell-free extracts for producing conjugate vaccine candidates against two of the most prevalent O serogroups of ETEC, O148 and O78. Specifically, we demonstrate site-specific installation of O-antigen polysaccharides (O-PS) corresponding to these serogroups onto licensed carrier proteins using the oligosaccharyltransferase PglB from Campylobacter jejuni. The resulting conjugates stimulate strong O-PS-specific humoral responses in mice and elicit IgG antibodies that possess bactericidal activity against the cognate pathogens. We also show that one of the prototype conjugates decorated with serogroup O148 O-PS reduces ETEC colonization in mice, providing evidence of vaccine-induced mucosal protection. We anticipate that our bacterial cell-based and cell-free platforms will enable creation of multivalent formulations with the potential for broad ETEC serogroup protection and increased access through low-cost biomanufacturing.

Modification of avian pathogenic Escherichia coli χ7122 lipopolysaccharide increases accessibility to glycoconjugate antigens.

BACKGROUND: Worldwide, an estimated 70.7 billion broilers were produced in 2020. With the reduction in use of prophylactic antibiotics as a result of consumer pressure and regulatory oversight alternative approaches, such as vaccination, are required to control bacterial infections. A potential way to produce a multivalent vaccine is via the generation of a glycoconjugate vaccine which consists of an antigenic protein covalently linked to an immunogenic carbohydrate. Protein-glycan coupling technology (PGCT) is an approach to generate glycoconjugates using enzymes that can couple proteins and glycan when produced in bacterial cells. Previous studies have used PGCT to generate a live-attenuated avian pathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC) strain capable of N-glycosylation of target proteins using a chromosomally integrated Campylobacter jejuni pgl locus. However, this proved ineffective against C. jejuni challenge. RESULTS: In this study we demonstrate the lack of surface exposure of glycosylated protein in APEC strain χ7122 carrying the pgl locus. Furthermore, we hypothesise that this may be due to the complex cell-surface architecture of E. coli. To this end, we removed the lipopolysaccharide O-antigen of APEC χ7122 pgl+ via deletion of the wecA gene and demonstrate increased surface exposure of glycosylated antigens (NetB and FlpA) in this strain. We hypothesise that increasing the surface expression of the glycosylated protein would increase the chance of host immune cells being exposed to the glycoconjugate, and therefore the generation of an efficacious immune response would be more likely. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate an increase in cell surface exposure and therefore accessibility of glycosylated antigens upon removal of lipopolysaccharide antigen from the APEC cell surface.

Production and efficacy of a low-cost recombinant pneumococcal protein polysaccharide conjugate vaccine.

Streptococcus pneumoniae is the leading cause of bacterial pneumonia. Although this is a vaccine preventable disease, S. pneumoniae still causes over 1 million deaths per year, mainly in children under the age of five. The biggest disease burden is in the developing world, which is mainly due to unavailability of vaccines due to their high costs. Protein polysaccharide conjugate vaccines are given routinely in the developed world to children to induce a protective antibody response against S. pneumoniae. One of these vaccines is Prevnar13, which targets 13 of the 95 known capsular types. Current vaccine production requires growth of large amounts of the 13 serotypes, and isolation of the capsular polysaccharide that is then chemically coupled to a protein, such as the diphtheria toxoid CRM197, in a multistep expensive procedure. In this study, we design, purify and produce novel recombinant pneumococcal protein polysaccharide conjugate vaccines in Escherichia coli, which act as mini factories for the low-cost production of conjugate vaccines. Recombinant vaccine efficacy was tested in a murine model of pneumococcal pneumonia; ability to protect against invasive disease was compared to that of Prevnar13. This study provides the first proof of principle that protein polysaccharide conjugate vaccines produced in E. coli can be used to prevent pneumococcal infection. Vaccines produced in this manner may provide a low-cost alternative to the current vaccine production methodology.

Exploitation of bacterial N-linked glycosylation to develop a novel recombinant glycoconjugate vaccine against Francisella tularensis.

Glycoconjugate-based vaccines have proved to be effective at producing long-lasting protection against numerous pathogens. Here, we describe the application of bacterial protein glycan coupling technology (PGCT) to generate a novel recombinant glycoconjugate vaccine. We demonstrate the conjugation of the Francisella tularensis O-antigen to the Pseudomonas aeruginosa carrier protein exotoxin A using the Campylobacter jejuni PglB oligosaccharyltransferase. The resultant recombinant F. tularensis glycoconjugate vaccine is expressed in Escherichia coli where yields of 3 mg l(-1) of culture were routinely produced in a single-step purification process. Vaccination of BALB/c mice with the purified glycoconjugate boosted IgG levels and significantly increased the time to death upon subsequent challenge with F. tularensis subsp. holarctica. PGCT allows different polysaccharide and protein combinations to be produced recombinantly and could be easily applicable for the production of diverse glycoconjugate vaccines.