Prototype vaccine protects against fungal infections
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Scientists in Italy have developed and tested a vaccine that protects lab animals against fungal infections that commonly infect people.
Current vaccines work against bacteria and viruses, but fungi can also cause serious disease, especially in people with impaired immune systems. The experimental vaccine developed by Dr. Antonio Cassone and his associates is therefore good news, even if it is only in the early stages of development.
The vaccine is based on a fungal beta-glucan compound joined to a diphtheria toxoid. Beta-glucan is present in the cell wall of all pathogenic fungi and is critical for fungal viability, the team explains in the Journal of Experimental Medicine for September 5.
They used a beta-glucan called laminarin isolated from the brown alga Laminaria digitata. By itself, laminarin triggers only a poor immune response, so the researchers joined it to the diphtheria toxoid CRM197 to make a vaccine, Lam-CRM.
Cassone, from Istituto Superiore di Sanita in Rome, and his associates then immunized mice with the Lam-CRM vaccine with a priming injection followed a week later with a booster shot.
Two weeks later, the animals were challenged with injections of a lethal dose of candida fungus. More of the inoculated animals stayed alive, and lived longer on average, than unprotected “control” mice.
The vaccine also worked to protect experimental animals against another fungus, Aspergillus fumigatus.
Although these are preliminary findings, Cassone’s group says they “nonetheless contribute to the proof of principle that a single immunizing tool can indeed be developed against multiple fungal infections.”
SOURCE: Journal of Experimental Medicine, September 5, 2005.
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