Researchers develop prototype 100 times stronger than traditional vaccines

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), in the US, have created a vaccine that is more potent than traditional vaccines available today. The glycoconjugate vaccine prototype is 100 times more effective than traditional glycoconjugate vaccines. A glycoconjugate vaccine is comprised of covalently bound carbohydrate and protein molecules, and is the standard design for many vaccines used to protect against common diseases such as pneumonia and meningitis. Researchers designed the vaccine prototype after discovering that immune cells, called T-cells, can recognize a vaccine’s carbohydrates, and from that recognition elicit an immune response. This discovery challenges popular assumptions that immune cells only recognize the protein portion of glycoconjugate vaccines. Proof that T-cells recognize carbohydrates came when researchers immunized mice with different types of glycoconjugate vaccines against the bacteria, group B Streptococcus. One group was immunized with vaccines containing different proteins. Another group was immunized with vaccines with the same proteins. For both groups, the...