Introduction: Despite its increase in Europe during the last years, there is no vaccine approved against listeriosis. The goal of our laboratory has been the development of a prophylactic therapy that may be not only effective against the disease, but also easy and cheap to implement in healthcare systems.
Materials and Methods: While several in silico and in vitro experiments were made to search for peptides to be used in vaccination and to study its capacity to develop an immune response and its safety, the most useful tool in our research was the use of animal models. They allowed us to study the effectivity of our vaccines in models of different susceptibility to develop the disease, as well as listeriosis infection during pregnancy.
Results: The use of a cellular vector like dendritic cells allowed us to see that two peptides of L. monocytogenes LLO and GAPDH virulence factors have a great effectivity in the prevention of listeriosis, providing an effective Th1 immune response. As cellular therapy may be too expensive and difficult to apply on clinical practice, we use another vector: gold glyconanoparticles. These nanovaccines, used with adjuvants, proof to be as effective as dendritic vaccines, providing great protection levels in all the murine models we used.
Conclusions: During this years our laboratory has developed two different kinds of vaccines against listeriosis. While dendritic vaccines could be used in some specific cases like oncological patients, the use of nanovaccines may be a more convenient preventive therapy for the vaccination of global population.
References:
Calderon-Gonzalez et al. 2014. Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol. 4, 22.
Rodriguez-Del Rio et al. 2015. Vaccine 33(12): 1465-73.
Calderon-Gonzalez et al. 2016. Nanomaterials (Basel) 6(8). pii: E151.
Calderon-Gonzalez et al. 2017. Oncotarget 8(33): 53916-34