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Towards a universally protective pneumococcal vaccine - analysis of possible new vaccine candidates

Research archive


  • University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
  • Researchers: Dr Lucas Bowler
  • Project Number: 0204.0
  • Category: Prevention
  • Duration: 2002 -2004
  • Start Date: 01 January 2002
  • Type: Lay summary
  • View scientific version

This project takes a different approach to vaccine development by exploiting the pneumococcal bacteria's need for different nutrients in order to grow and survive inside the human body. Iron is one of these essential nutrients - it is very scarce inside the human body, so pneumococcal bacteria have mechanisms to obtain iron more easily.

In work previously funded by the Foundation, researchers have found what factors are essential for pneumococcal bacteria to obtain iron and cause disease in humans. In this study they intend to fully investigate each of these factors to determine how much use each will be in development of a new pneumococcal vaccine.

Results from this study have been published in a scientific journal as follows:

Bowler LD.
Representational difference analysis of cDNA.
Methods Mol Med 2004;94:49-66.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=14959822&query_hl=72&itool=pubmed_DocSum

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