Technical Field:

Vaccine: Infectious Diarrhea

The Technology

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is a major cause of diarrheal disease that kills 500,000 children annually in the developing world and also is the principle cause of traveler’s diarrhea. Considerable effort has been expended toward development of a vaccine, but progress has been hindered by the discovery that the obvious targets, colonization factors and toxins, are poor antigens.

Researchers at the University of Tennessee have discovered an adhesive protein in E. coli, EtpA, which is a promising new target antigen for ETEC vaccine development. This protein is associated and works with flagella to promote bacterial adhesion to the host epithelium, and mutant E. coli strains from which EtpA has been eliminated demonstrate reduced host colonization. Furthermore, the inventors have used a mouse model to show that intranasal immunization with EtpA provides protection against ETEC by reducing bacterial colonization.

Related Publications

• Vaccine. 2009 Jul 23;27(34):4601-8.

• Nature. 2009 Jan 29;457(7229):594-8.

• Infect Immun. 2010 Jul;78(7):3027-35.

• Clin Vaccine Immunol. 2012 Oct;19(10):1603-8.

Benefits

• Novel vaccine antigen for enterotoxigenic E. coli

• Potential to treat multiple strains of the disease with a single vaccine

The Inventors

Dr. James Fleckenstein is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Molecular Microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on the pathogenesis of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC), with a specific goal to discover and characterize novel molecules that might be exploited as targets for vaccine development.

Patents

• US Patent 8,323,668

Reference: PD 07031