New ‘clean vaccines’ aid disease fight

A powerful new class of therapeutics, known as recombinant attenuated salmonella vaccines (RASV), holds great potential in the fight against fatal diseases including hepatitis B, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, AIDS and pneumonia. Qingke Kong and his colleagues at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, have developed a technique to make such vaccines safer and more effective. The group, under the direction of Dr. Roy Curtiss, chief scientist at Biodesign’s Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, demonstrated that a modified strain of salmonella showed a five-fold reduction in virulence in mice, while preserving strong, immunogenic properties. Streptococcus pneumoniae, an aerobic bacterium, is the causative agent of diseases including community-acquired pneumonia, otitis media, meningitis, and bacteremia. It remains a leading killer – childhood pneumonia alone causing some three million fatalities annually, mostly in less developed countries. Existing vaccines are inadequate for protecting vulnerable populations for several reasons. Heat stabilization and needle injection are required,...