Pneumococcal meningitis - new targets for vaccine development
Research archive
- Adelaide University, Adelaide, Australia
- Researchers:
Dr James Paton
- Project Number: 0109.0
- Category: Prevention
- Duration: 2002 - 2005
- Start Date: 01 January 2001
- Type: Lay summary
- View scientific version
Treatment of pneumococcal infections, especially meningitis is becoming more complicated because pneumococcal bacteria are becoming more resistant to antibiotics.
There are over 90 strains of the bacteria which can cause disease. Although existing vaccines protect against the strains which cause most disease, they cannot prevent all strains.
The aim of this study is to investigate how the bacteria cause disease and to find out which pneumococcal features are most important in this process. These features can then be investigated as targets in vaccine development. In the long term this information can be used to develop a vaccine which can protect against all the different types of pneumococcal bacteria.
Results from this study have been published in scientific journals as follows:
Stroeher UH, Paton AW, Ogunniyi AD, Paton JC.
Mutation of luxS of Streptococcus pneumoniae affects virulence in a mouse model.
Infect Immun 2003 Jun;71(6):3206-12.
http://iai.asm.org/cgi/reprint/71/6/3206.pdf
Kwon HY, Ogunniyi AD, Choi MH, Pyo SN, Rhee DK, Paton JC.
The ClpP protease of Streptococcus pneumoniae modulates virulence gene expression and protects against fatal pneumococcal challenge.
Infect Immun 2004 Oct;72(10):5646-53.
http://iai.asm.org/cgi/reprint/72/10/5646.pdf
Standish AJ, Stroeher UH, Paton JC.
The two-component signal transduction system RR06/HK06 regulates expression of cbpA in Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2005 May 24;102(21):7701-6.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/102/21/7701