Scripps research team blocks bacterial communication system to prevent deadly staph ...(administered to mice infected with Staph...)

Date:10/30/2007

administered to mice infected with Staphylococcus aureus, was highly effective at binding with and sequestering the targeted autoinducer, and to a lesser extent with a second autoinducer. This activity proved to effectively block quorum sensing and infection in the mice.

Resistance to S. aureus, a common form of Staph infection has become a major concern in hospitals, and, as the recent CDC report indicates, outside of medical settings as well. As a result, says Janda, I think the impact of this approach could be really huge, because our approach side steps the resistance problem with common antibiotic treatments.

Janda says the antibody AP4-24H11 could one day be given to humans as a passive vaccine to block infections as it did in mice. The AP4 hapten could also be applied as an active vaccine that would induce production of antibodies to block quorum sensing. He says such vaccines could, for instance, be given to patients entering the hospital for surgery to prevent infection by Staph bacteria. This would not, however, probably be an effective treatment against infections that have already progressed, because in such cases the damage from quorum sensing would already have been done.

Janda and his colleagues, including Junguk Park, Gunnar Kaufmann and Richard Ulevitch, chairman of the Scripps Research Department of Immunology, are already working to design related haptens that will induce antibodies effective against all the autoinducers used by Gram-positive bacteria, which might one day be administered as a vaccine cocktail to prevent infection by a wide range of bacteria. The group is seeking a pharmaceutical partner to fund further tests with AP4 and AP4-24H11 in animal models and, if all goes well, to carry a vaccine through human clinical trials.

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Contact: Keith McKeown kmckeown@scripps.edu 858-784-8134 Scripps Research Institute Source:Eurekalert

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