Discovery of new immune response gives hope for new meningitis
vaccine
12 Nov 2010
The discovery of a previously unknown immune response by
scientists at the Universities of Leicester and Dublin has given a much
needed breakthrough in the fight against pneumonia, meningitis and
septicaemia.
The discovery will lead to a dramatic shift in our understanding of
how the body’s immune system responds to infection caused by
Streptococcus pneumoniae and could pave the way for more
effective vaccines.
The two teams say they have shown for the first time that the
bacterial toxin pneumolysin triggers an immune response by
activating a recently discovered group of proteins, called the NLRP3
inflammasome. Once activated, the inflammasome provides protection
against infection caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae.
They demonstrated that this mechanism operates independently of
other previously described immune response proteins — contrary to
current understanding in this field.
Importantly, this paper is the first to demonstrate that the NLRP3
inflammasome is essential to the immune response against infection
by the pathogen and that the bacterial toxin pneumolysin is the key
driver of this process.
The research was carried out by the teams from Leicester and Dublin
with other collaborators from Trinity College Dublin, the US and
Switzerland over four years and supported by Science Foundation
Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, the UK Medical Research Council (MRC)
and the Meningitis Research Foundation.
The research, which was jointly led by Dr Aras Kadioglu from the
University of Leicester and Dr Ed Lavelle from Trinity College
Dublin, with Dr Edel McNeela of TCD as its lead author, has been
published in the journal PLoS Pathogens.
Dr Aras Kadioglu, Reader in Respiratory Infection in the Department
of Infection, Immunity & Inflammation at the University of Leicester
said: “This is a major breakthrough in our understanding of the
immune response to Streptococcus pneumoniae; a human
pathogen of global significance, responsible for over one million
infant deaths annually and the major cause of illness and death in
the elderly from infections of the respiratory tract.
"In order to develop improved pneumococcal vaccines for both the
very young and the elderly, it is essential to understand how this
bacterium interacts with the host immune system. The discoveries
described in our paper represent a huge stride towards this
objective. That is why these are exciting new findings, discovered
in the course of a unique collaboration between scientists at the
University of Leicester and Trinity College Dublin.”
Dr Lavelle, Lecturer in Immunology in the School of Biochemistry and
Immunology, Trinity College Dublin, said: “This is a very exciting
finding and supports the development of inflammasome activating
vaccines to prevent pneumococcal diseases including pneumonia and
septicaemia. If a protein-based vaccine could be produced that can
protect against all strains of the pneumococcus, this would
be of tremendous value and our discovery that NLRP3 is needed for
protection will point us in the right direction in terms of how to
develop such vaccines.”