Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Publication

Anti-CfaE nanobodies provide broad cross-protection against major pathogenic enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli strains, with implications for vaccine design

Amcheslavsky, Alla
Wallace, Aaron L.
Monir, Ejemel
Li, Qi
Stoppato, Matteo
Giuntini, Serena
Schiller, Zachary A.
Pondish, Jessica R.
Toomey, Jacqueline R.
Schneider, Ryan M.
... show 4 more
Embargo Expiration Date
Link to Full Text
Abstract

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is estimated to cause approximately 380,000 deaths annually during sporadic or epidemic outbreaks worldwide. Development of vaccines against ETEC is very challenging due to the vast heterogeneity of the ETEC strains. An effective vaccines would have to be multicomponent to provide coverage of over ten ETEC strains with genetic variabilities. There is currently no vaccine licensed to prevent ETEC. Nanobodies are successful new biologics in treating mucosal infectious disease as they recognize conserved epitopes on hypervariable pathogens. Cocktails consisting of multiple nanobodies could provide even broader epitope coverage at a lower cost compared to monoclonal antibodies. Identification of conserved epitopes by nanobodies can also assist reverse engineering of an effective vaccine against ETEC. By screening nanobodies from immunized llamas and a naive yeast display library against adhesins of colonization factors, we identified single nanobodies that show cross-protective potency against eleven major pathogenic ETEC strains in vitro. Oral administration of nanobodies led to a significant reduction of bacterial colonization in animals. Moreover, nanobody-IgA fusion showed extended inhibitory activity in mouse colonization compared to commercial hyperimmune bovine colostrum product used for prevention of ETEC-induced diarrhea. Structural analysis revealed that nanobodies recognized a highly-conserved epitope within the putative receptor binding region of ETEC adhesins. Our findings support further rational design of a pan-ETEC vaccine to elicit robust immune responses targeting this conserved epitope.

Source

Amcheslavsky A, Wallace AL, Ejemel M, Li Q, McMahon CT, Stoppato M, Giuntini S, Schiller ZA, Pondish JR, Toomey JR, Schneider RM, Meisinger J, Heukers R, Kruse AC, Barry EM, Pierce BG, Klempner MS, Cavacini LA, Wang Y. Anti-CfaE nanobodies provide broad cross-protection against major pathogenic enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli strains, with implications for vaccine design. Sci Rep. 2021 Feb 2;11(1):2751. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-81895-0. PMID: 33531570; PMCID: PMC7854682. Link to article on publisher's site

Year of Medical School at Time of Visit
Sponsors
Dates of Travel
DOI
10.1038/s41598-021-81895-0
PubMed ID
33531570
Other Identifiers
Notes

Full author list omitted for brevity. For the full list of authors, see article.

Funding and Acknowledgements
Corresponding Author
Related Resources
Related Resources
Repository Citation
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.