One of the major challenges of vaccine development is the conservation of immunogenicity and protective efficacy through the stages of design, production, formulation and delivery. The critical issue is that how and in what form an antigen is taken up by antigen presenting cells for proteolytic processing and presentation to the immune system bound to MHC can have dramatic effects on the activation of Th cells to drive clonal responses and induction of immunological memory. Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) is a pathogenic commensal of the human respiratory tract that causes diseases with enormous socioeoconomic burdens. There is no licensed vaccine, although the potential for vaccination with outer membrane components to reduce the incidence of disease caused by NTHi has recently been demonstrated in clinical trials. The issue of immunomodulation was explored in this thesis in the context of the further evaluation of a leading NTHi vaccine candidate, the outer membrane protein OMP26. The efficacy of recombinant OMP26 (rOMP26) against NTHi challenge has been previously demonstrated in mice, rats and chinchillas. In rats, efficacy was shown to be restricted to the precursor form (containing the signal peptide) and not the mature form of rOMP26. The immunodulatory effects of changes to the rOMP26 structure were further investigated in this thesis. A range of structural variants of rOMP26 were constructed in view of reducing extraneous plasmid-derived sequence from the antigen and to introduce a unique cysteine residue as a potential conjugate site for multivalent vaccine development (Chapter 2). It was demonstrated that minor structural changes to rOMP26 such as the addition, deletion, modification or relative positioning of a single amino acid or bulky group, designed to increase the efficiency of production or introduce (cysteine) conjugation sites, altered the expression of the protein in E. coli and the immunogenicity in Balb/C mice. Furthermore, in contradiction to the published report (El-Adhami et al. 1999) and a new study in rats (Chapter 3),there was no positive effect of the signal peptide in mice, with precursor and mature forms of rOMP26 equally immunogenic (Chapter 2). Following confirmation of the need to retain the signal peptide for the immunogenicity of rOMP26 in rats, a precursor form (rOMP26VTAL) in which the conserved n-region of the signal peptide was deleted, and shown to reduce the efficiency of the cleavage of the signal peptide by signal peptidase during protein overexpression in E. coli (Chapter 3). Not only did this deletion result in an increase the yield and stability of the purified precursor protein, but rOMP26VTAL was highly immunogenic and enhanced the clearance of NTHi from the lungs of challenged rats. The potential for signal peptides to be exploited as an immune-enhancing moiety in a proteinaceous vaccine is discussed. Following the development of rOMP26VTAL as a production optimised variant of rOMP26,the next step was to test the feasibility of rOMP26VTAL as a component of a multivalent vaccine (Chapter 4). Two chimeras were constructed with LB1(f)2,1,3,a trivalent synthetic B-cell epitope from the extracellular loop 3 region of the P5 fimbrin protein of NTHi, positioned at the N- or C-terminus of rOMP26VTAL. The solubility of rOMP26VTAL was affected by the fusion, with both chimera constructs expressed only in the insoluble fraction, thus requiring a denaturing protocol for purification. Although rLB1(f)2,1,3-OMP26VTAL was expressed and purified as a more stable protein and in greater yield than rOMP26VTAL-LB1(f)2,1,3,the relative positioning of the fusion was important and rOMP26VTAL-LB1(f)2,1,3 was significantly more immunogenic in rats than rLB1(f)2,1,3-OMP26VTAL. In addition,rOMP26VTALLB1( f)2,1,3,but not rLB1(f)2,1,3-OMP26VTAL induced a significant degree of bacterial clearance following pulmonary challenge with NTHi, in levels comparable to the highly efficacious rOMP26VTAL construct. In the third part of the thesis, bacterial ghosts were evaluated as a novel mucosal delivery technology for rOMP26VTAL and rOMP26VTAL-LB1(f)2,1,3,(Chapter 5). To mimic the natural presentation of OMP26 and P5 fimbrin antigens on the cell surface of NTHi, an OmpA' sandwich fusion surface display system was developed for the outer membrane expression of the OMP26 constructs in E. coli ghosts. Following gut immunisation, but not intranasal immunisation even when co-administered with the cholera toxin-derived adjuvant CTA1-DD,bacterial ghosts were successful at presenting OMP26VTAL and rOMP26VTAL-LB1(f)2,1,3 to the immune system for the induction of enhanced clearance of NTHi in the rat pulmonary challenge model. Although this study was the first to demonstrate enhanced bacterial clearance induced by heterologous antigens expressed in the outer membrane of bacterial ghosts, future studies with ghosts will require optimisation of the expression levels of the OmpA' fusion proteins possibly to avoid cross-reactive responses related to high doses of ghosts in the inoculum. This thesis presents data that both supports the further evaluation of rOMP26 constructs for clinical trials, and has demonstrated the significant effects of structural changes, method of production and delivery system can have on the immunogenicity of a candidate vaccine. Such knowledge will contribute to and provide some new approaches for enhancing the efficiency of vaccine development against a range of diseases including those caused by NTHi. Major Outcomes: 1. Demonstration that the immunogenicity of rOMP26 antigen constructs is affected by structural modifications and their positioning within the construct, and by the delivery system. 2. Development of rOMP26VTAL,an rOMP26 construct with the KNIAK sequence deletion of the signal peptide n-region. This protein retains the immunogenicity and protective efficacy of rOMP26,but is produced with reduced cleavage of the signal peptide, resulting in higher yields and a stable protein. Lacks extraneous plasmid-derived multiple cloning site sequence, and is produced in high yield as a stable protein. 3. Construction of a NTHi rOMP26VTAL-LB1(f)2,1,3 chimera antigen that induced enhanced clearance of NTHi in an acute pulmonary challenge model in rats. 4. Development of an OmpA' surface display system for the expression of rOMP26 antigen constructs in the outer membrane of E. coli/bacterial ghosts 5. Bacterial ghosts were successful as delivery vehicles for rOMP26 candidate vaccine constructs when delivered in the gut.
| Date of Award | 2007 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Jenelle Kyd (Supervisor) & Allan W. Cripps (Supervisor) |
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