Towards sterilizing immunity against Leptospira with a DNA vaccine

In my previous post, I described the failure of researchers to come up with a conventional protein-based subunit vaccine that confers sterilizing immunity against leptospirosis.  What I mean by "conventional" subunit vaccine is a mixture of purified recombinant Leptospira protein with an adjuvant (either aluminum hydroxide or Freund's).  Although an antibody response was detected against most proteins tested, immunization failed to prevent kidney colonization in every case, including those animals that survived challenge with lethal strains of Leptosipra.  It's becoming clear that the leptospirosis vaccine field must move beyond simple formulations of protein plus adjuvant if sterilizing immunity is desired.

Several labs have explored more modern approaches to delivering leptospirosis vaccines.  Odir Dellagostin's group down in Brazil tested the efficacy of DNA vaccines in protecting hamsters against leptospirosis, as described in this paper in Clinical and Vaccine Immunology.  Forster and colleagues targeted the Leptospira interrogans LigA and LigB proteins, which are surface proteins that disrupt (or exploit) multiple host functions.

The investigators cloned various fragments of the lengthy ligA and ligB genes downstream of the human cytomegalovirus promoter of the commercial expression plasmid pTARGET.  They mixed the plasmid DNA with aluminum hydroxide adjuvant and injected the material into the muscle of the hind leg of hamsters.  The animals were given a booster with the same material 21 days later.  An IgG immune response was detected against four of the the five Lig protein fragments being tested (see figure below).

Figure 2 from Forster et al., 2013.  Sera were drawn before immunization and after the first and second immunizations with pTARGET-based lig plasmid DNA.  Purified recombinant protein encoded by each plasmid was used as antigen in ELISAs.  Left, middle, and right bar for each DNA: before immunization, after first immunization, and after second immunization, respectively.

21 days after the boost, the animals were challenged with a lethal strain of L. interrogans.  The survival curves are shown below.  Note that animals immunized with the vector alone (small filled circles) were all dead by day 11.

Figure 3 from Forster et al., 2013.

Among the lig gene fragments, the one expressing the "LigBrep" fragment was effective, protecting five of the eight animals in the group (62.5%) from death.  LigBrep comprises amino acid residues 1 through 628 of LigB, whose total length is 1891 residues.  Although the survival rate is nothing to get excited over, what distinguishes the LigBrep DNA vaccine from the conventional subunit vaccines tested in earlier studies is that the kidneys from 4 of the 5 survivors were culture negative, indicating that sterilizing immunity was achieved in 80% of the animals that survived infection.

Another notable outcome of the study was that protection was achieved even though the challenge strain and the vaccine's lig gene originated from different Leptospira serovars.  One of the problems with killed whole-cell vaccines is that they only protect against Leptospira serovars present in the vaccine formulation because they target LPS, whose structure varies among different serovars.  Leptospira proteins tend to be similar in amino acid sequence across different species and are therefore more attractive as vaccines.  (The "killed-whole leptospires" control plotted in the graph above was generated from the challenge strain).

So how does DNA vaccination induce sterilizing immunity against Leptospira?  As always, more studies are needed to explore this issue, but I will go ahead and speculate. DNA vaccines that are administered by standard injection stimulate a Th1-biased immune response.  Studies with cattle have suggested that vaccines must stimulate Th1 immunity to minimize kidney colonization by Leptospira (see this study, for example).  Moreover, an earlier study by Dellagostin's group demonstrated sterilizing immunity against L. interrogans in some animals immunized with a Mycobacterium bovis BCG strain that was engineered to express LipL32, the major outer membrane protein of L. interrogans.  BCG also stimulates Th1 immunity.

Why would a Th1 response be necessary for sterilizing immunity against Leptospira?  Th1 cytokines help steer B cells into producing an IgG isotype that is strongly recognized by Fc receptor on phagocytes.  Consequently, bacteria bound by these IgG molecules are engulfed by opsonophagocytosis.  During Leptospira infections, opsonophagocytosis clears spirochetes from the circulation during the antibody response, raising the possibility that opsonophagocytosis also leads to sterilizing immunity by vaccines that induce production of the "right" IgG.

Th1 cells are also necessary for cellular immunity, which enhances the killing functions of macrophages so that they can rid themselves of intracellular pathogens.  Leptospira is considered to be an extracellular pathogen.  Nevertheless, there may be a transient intracellular phase that is critical during infection.  Although intracellular Leptospira has not been observed in vivo, L. interrogans is known to survive and replicate in cultured macrophages.

References

Forster KM, Hartwig DD, Seixas FK, Bacelo KL, Amaral M, Hartleben CP, & Dellagostin OA (2013). A conserved region of leptospiral immunoglobulin-like A and B proteins as a DNA vaccine elicits a prophylactic immune response against leptospirosis. Clinical and Vaccine Immunology : CVI, 20 (5), 725-731 PMID: 23486420

Zuerner RL, Alt DP, Palmer MV, Thacker TC, & Olsen SC (2011). A Leptospira borgpetersenii serovar Hardjo vaccine induces a Th1 response, activates NK cells, and reduces renal colonization. Clinical and Vaccine Immunology : CVI, 18 (4), 684-91 PMID: 21288995

Seixas FK, da Silva EF, Hartwig DD, Cerqueira GM, Amaral M, Fagundes MQ, Dossa RG, & Dellagostin OA (2007). Recombinant Mycobacterium bovis BCG expressing the LipL32 antigen of Leptospira interrogans protects hamsters from challenge. Vaccine, 26 (1), 88-95 PMID: 18063449

Toma C, Okura N, Takayama C, & Suzuki T (2011). Characteristic features of intracellular pathogenic Leptospira in infected murine macrophages. Cellular microbiology, 13 (11), 1783-1192 PMID: 21819516


Related posts

• Is sterilizing immunity against Leptospira possible with protein subunit vaccines?
• A new attentuated leptospirosis vaccine protects hamsters from lethal infection by more than one serovar of Leptospira

Is sterilizing immunity against Leptospira possible with protein subunit vaccines?

With complete bacterial genome sequences now available, "reverse vaccinology" can be conducted to identify proteins that can function as subunit vaccines.  The "gene first" approach of reverse vaccinology relies upon computer analysis of the genome sequence to identify encoded proteins with  features common to known surface-exposed and secreted bacterial proteins.  The selected genes can then be cloned and expressed as recombinant proteins.  The proteins, which may number in the hundreds, are then purified for vaccine testing in the animal model appropriate for the bacterial pathogen.  Reverse vaccinology has been employed successfully to find protective protein antigens against Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B, Streptococcus pneumoniae, group B Streptococcus, Bacillus anthracis, Porphyromonas gingivalis, and other bacterial pathogens (reviewed in this paper).

This approach sounds straightforward but in practice may not always lead to identification of effective subunit vaccines.  An important study from Ben Adler's group down in Monash University illustrates the challenges of finding a subunit vaccine that prevents chronic Leptospira infections.  They focused on serovar Hardjo, which causes chronic infections in cattle.  They selected 263 Hardjo genes that were predicted to encode surface-exposed, secreted, or lipid-modified proteins.  Among these they successfully cloned and expressed 223 genes as 238 protein antigens in E. coli.  Some genes were expressed as two or more fragments because of their large size.  210 of the 238 (88%) aggregated into inclusion bodies during expression and had to be kept dissolved in urea during their purification.  (Strangely, the urea was not removed by dialysis prior to immunization.)  The 238 purified proteins were mixed with an aluminum hydroxide adjuvant and injected into hamsters.  169 of the 238 proteins (71%) generated an antibody response, yet none succeeded in preventing colonization of the kidneys following challenge with a Hardjo strain.

It's been hard enough to find leptospiral proteins that protect hamsters from lethal disease when tested as vaccines (see this article for a review), yet Murray and colleagues sought proteins that protected against Leptospira colonization, a more difficult endeavor that has never been achieved with subunit vaccines.  The Hardjo strain they used easily colonizes the kidneys yet fails to produce any signs of disease in hamsters.  Although several studies have demonstrated that certain versions of the LigA and LigB proteins, when administered as vaccines, protect hamsters and mice from being killed by lethal strains of Leptospira, survivors are left with infected kidneys.  A vaccine that protects against disease or death but not infection may be adequate for humans, who eventually clear the spirochetes from their kidneys even following a natural infection (assuming the disease doesn't kill them).  However, vaccinated cattle infected with Hardjo may not be able to clear the spirochetes and will continue to shed infectious Leptospira into the environment, placing the entire herd and the workers handling them at risk of infection.  Hardjo infections generally don't cause signs of disease in cattle, but they can cause fetal death and drop in milk production in cows.

The choice of adjuvant and destruction of protective conformational epitopes by urea are possible reasons for failure to find a protective antigen.  On the other hand, perhaps a different method for delivery of protein antigens into animals should been considered.  Stay tuned.

Featured paper

Murray GL, Lo M, Bulach DM, Srikram A, Seemann T, Quinsey NS, Sermswan RW, Allen A, & Adler B (2013). Evaluation of 238 antigens of Leptospira borgpetersenii serovar Hardjo for protection against kidney colonisation. Vaccine, 31 (3), 495-499 PMID: 23176980

Helpful reviews

Dellagostin, O.A., Grassmann, A.A., Hartwig, D.D., Felix, S.R., da Silva, E.F., & McBride, A.J.A. (November 2011).  Recombinant vaccines against leptospirosis.  Human Vaccines 7(11):1215-1224. DOI: 10.4161/hv.7.11.17944

Serruto, D., Serino, L., Masignani, V., & Pizza, M. (May 26, 2009).  Genome-based approaches to develop vaccines against bacterial pathogens.  Vaccine 27(25-26):3245-3250.  DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2009.01.072

BAM! A rare outer membrane protein of the stealth pathogen Treponema pallidum hidden in plain sight

Our immune system is capable of generating antibody against bacterial proteins located inside and outside of the bacterial cell.  However only those antibodies targeting surface proteins (or other surface components) have the potential to eliminate the bacteria.

Unlike typical Gram negative bacteria, the external surface of the Treponema pallidum outer membrane is bare except for a tiny number of proteins protruding from the membrane.  Most of the proteins targeted by the host antibody response are safely tucked away beneath the surface, inaccessible to the antibodies that recognize them.  T. pallidum even lacks LPS, which is a major target found on typical Gram negative bacteria.  The barren surface of T. pallidum is therefore one factor that may allow the "stealth pathogen" to persist in the host despite a strong antibody response.

None of the rare T. pallidum outer membrane proteins (Omps) have been identified with certainty, until now.  Scientists at the University of Connecticut have finally confirmed that TP0326 is one of these rare Omps.¹  Desrosiers and colleagues showed that the protein TP0326 was digested when proteinase K was added to live T. pallidum.  Proteins known to be located in the periplasm were left untouched by the protease, indicating that the fragile outer membrane remained intact while the spirochetes were being harvested for the experiment.  These results indicated that TP0326 was exposed on the surface of T. pallidum.

TP0326 (also called "Tp92") was first identified as a candidate Omp over a decade ago when rabbit antibodies against the protein were shown to promote opsonophagocytosis (engulfment) of T. pallidum.²   Antibodies must physically link bacteria to phagocytes for opsonophagocytosis to proceed.  Opsonophagocytosis therefore occurs only when antibodies against surface-exposed proteins are present.  The amino acid sequence of TP0326 also gave clues to its location.  TP0326 was identified as a homolog of the Omp85 family,² a set of proteins known to reside in the outer membrane of other Gram negative bacteria.  Omp85 was later renamed BamA when it was shown to be the core component of the outer membrane protein complex "BAM" that inserts newly expressed Omps into the outer membrane.³

A number of computer programs predicted that TP0326 spanned the outer membrane as a β-barrel structure, which I described in an earlier post.⁴  The gallery of E. coli transmembrane Omps displayed below shows that the loops on one side of the barrel are exposed on the surface of the bacterium.  The transmembrane portion of BamA is depicted as a box because its structure has yet to be determined experimentally, but it is also likely to have a β-barrel structure.

Figure 1 from Burgess 2008.  The outer membrane is colored gray.  The numbers indicate the number of β strands that cross the membrane.  The periplasm is located below the outer membrane.

The amino terminus of BamA consists of five repeating structures called POTRA, which are thought to guide the β strands of new transmembrane Omps into the outer membrane.³  Note that the POTRA domains protrude into the periplasmic space.  The amino terminus of TP0326 is thought to possess the POTRA domains as well.

Given the prediction that TP0326 structurally resembles BamA, it wasn't too surprising that TP0326 was exposed on the surface of T. pallidum.  What was surprising was how TP0326 was targeted by the immune system in syphilis patients.  Among the six patients examined by Desrosiers et al., three lacked any antibody whatsover against TP0326.  Although the other three syphilis patients managed to generate antibody against TP0326, the antibodies reacted weakly (1 patient) or not at all (2 patients) with the β-barrel domain, which contained the surface-exposed loops.  Instead, the antibodies targeting TP0326 reacted strongly with the subsurface POTRA domains in these three patients.  Assuming that the results with these six patients can be extrapolated to other syphilis patients, humans infected with T. pallidum are incapable of generating a strong antibody response against the surface-exposed loops of TP0326.

Since the exposed regions of TP0326 appear to be an Achilles heel of T. pallidum, TP0326 may have evolved to avoid generation of antibodies targeting its vulnerable segments.  Experimentally infected rabbits, which are not a natural host of T. pallidum, succeeded in generating antibody against the TP0326 β-barrel domain. Unfortunately the authors didn't present any data indicating whether the surface-exposed loops were recognized by the rabbit antibodies.  However, as I mentioned above, earlier work showed that infected rabbits produce opsonic antibody against TP0326.²  The same paper showed that TP0326 was somewhat effective as a subunit vaccine in the rabbit model of syphilis.²  Both of these observations suggest that rabbits are able to produce antibody that reacts with the surface-exposed regions of TP0326.  The rabbit model could be used to figure out conclusively whether the effectiveness of TP0326 as a vaccine relies upon generation of antibodies against the surface-exposed loops of the protein.  If so, an approach for developing a syphilis vaccine would be to coax the human immune system into generating antibodies that target the surface-exposed loops of TP0326.


Featured paper

1. Desrosiers DC, Anand A, Luthra A, Dunham-Ems SM, LeDoyt M, Cummings MAD, Eshghi A, Cameron CE, Cruz AR, Salazar JC, Caimano MJ, and Radolf JD (June 2011).  TP0326, a Treponema pallidum β-barrel assembly machinery A (BamA) orthologue and rare outer membrane protein.  Molecular Microbiology 80(6):1496-1515.  DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2958.2011.07662.x

Related papers

2. Cameron CE, Lukehart SA, Castro C, Molini, B, Godornes C, and Van Voorhis WC (April 2000).  Opsonic potential, protective capacity, and sequence conservation of the Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum Tp92.  The Journal of Infectious Diseases 181:1401-1413.  DOI: 10.1086/315399


3. Knowles TJ, Scott-Tucker A, Overduin M, and Henderson IR (March 2009).  Membrane protein architects: the role of the BAM complex in outer membrane protein assembly.  Nature Reviews Microbiology 7(3):206-214.  DOI: 10.1038/nrmicro2069

4. Cox DL, Luthra A, Dunham-Ems S, Desrosiers DC, Salazar JC, Caimano MJ , and Radolf JD (December 2010).  Surface immunolabeling and consensus computational  framework to identify candidate rare outer membrane proteins of Treponema pallidum.  Infection and Immunity 78(12):5178-5194.  DOI: 10.1128/IAI.00834-10

Image source

Burgess NK, Dao TP, Stanley AM, and Fleming KG (September 26, 2008).  β-barrel proteins that reside in the Escherichia coli outer membrane in vivo demonstrate varied folding behavior in vitro.  Journal of Biological Chemistry 283(39):26748-26758.  DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M80275420

Related posts

• The quest for outer membrane proteins of the stealth pathogen Treponema pallidum:  the cliffhanger episode

A new attenuated leptospirosis vaccine protects hamsters from lethal infection by more than one serovar of Leptospira

Scientists have demonstrated that a new attenuated leptospirosis vaccine protects laboratory hamsters from being killed by Leptospira, even when the challenge and vaccine strains belong to different serovars (immune types).^1,2  This is the first leptospirosis vaccine to confer complete cross-protection against lethal infection by a serovar different from the one used for immunization.

The leptospirosis vaccines that are out on the market are still formulated with killed Leptospira or sometimes their outer membrane.  These traditional vaccines are administered primarily to dogs, cattle, and pigs.  Human leptospirosis vaccines are not available in most countries, even in areas where leptospirosis is endemic.

New types of leptospirosis vaccines are needed since the traditional killed vaccines are flawed.  One problem is that immunity is serovar specific.  For this reason a vaccine must contain all the serovars that the target population may encounter.  Even when the vaccine manufacturers figure out which serovars are circulating, a new serovar may emerge, rendering the vaccine ineffective as the new serovar spreads through the susceptible population.  The vaccine must then be reformulated at substantial cost.

This is exactly what happened to the leptospirosis vaccines that are given to dogs.³  The early canine vaccines, first available in the 1970s, contained the serovars Canicola and Icterohemorrhagiae.  These vaccines worked fine until the late 1980s or so, when new serovars started to appear in infected dogs, even in those that had been vaccinated.  Since then vaccine makers have added the serovars Grippotyphosa and Pomona to their vaccines.  Nevertheless with over 200 pathogenic serovars of Leptospira lurking out there, we don't know when or which additional serovars will emerge in the future.

It would be nice to have a single leptospirosis vaccine formulation that would protect against all serovars.  The protective effect of traditional vaccines is due to antibodies generated against lipopolysaccharide (LPS), whose structure differs among the serovars of Leptospira.  Since immunization elicits antibodies that recognize the LPS of only the serovars included in the vaccine, vaccinated individuals remain susceptible to infection by other serovars.

To get around this problem, scientists have been testing individual Leptospira surface proteins as potential vaccines in rodent models of leptospirosis.  Leptospira surface proteins tend to be antigenically conserved among the different serovars:  antibodies generated against a protein from one serovar often reacts against the same protein expressed by other serovars.  According to many studies the LipL32 and Lig surface lipoproteins, when delivered as recombinant proteins, naked DNA, or by microbial vectors (adenovirus and Mycobacterium bovis), apparently protected hamsters or guinea pigs from lethal infection by Leptospira.  Unfortunately one of the leaders in the leptospirosis field, Ben Adler (also an author of the two featured papers), has questioned the interpretation of these studies.⁴  He points out that the challenge strains used in several studies were not sufficiently lethal, making it easier to observe a protective effect of the vaccine.  Moreover some studies claimed statistically significant protective effects of the protein vaccine when in fact there was none upon Adler's reanalysis of the data.  The only protein to convincingly exert a protective effect in an appropriate animal model was LigA⁵ although the ability of the LigA subunit vaccine to cross-protect against different serovars of Leptospira has yet to be tested.  However there is one major problem with using LigA as a vaccine--not all Leptospira strains have the ligA gene.⁶

In the two studies described here the investigators took a step back from looking at individual proteins and developed an attenuated strain to use for immunization.  The properties of the attenuated strain, designated M1352, are described in the paper authored by Murray and colleagues.²  The M1352 strain was not developed by the classic approach of continuously growing and passaging the bacteria in culture until they lost their ability to cause disease.  Instead the strain was one of a large collection of mutants generated by random transposon mutagenesis of L. interrogans serovar Manilae.  The M1352 strain had the transposon inserted in a gene located in a large cluster of genes encoding enzymes that assemble LPS.  The mutation had subtle effects on the reactivity of M1352 with various antibodies raised against leptospiral LPS, suggesting that the LPS structure itself was somehow changed in M1352 when compared with the wild-type Manilae strain.

Since LPS is a crucial surface component that interacts with the host, it was not too surprising that M1352 was not able to cause lethal infections like its wild-type Manilae parent.  When they infected hamsters with the M1352 strain, the spirochetes were unable to kill the hamsters or even establish an infection in the kidneys.  Despite the efficient clearance of M1352, the Leptospira lingered long enough in the hamsters to provoke an antibody response. Western blots of L. interrogans lysates revealed strong reactivity of antibodies from the M1352-infected hamsters to a number of proteins. Because the M1352 strain generated an antibody response without establishing an infection, the authors decided to test the weakened strain as a vaccine in the hamster model in a follow-up study.¹

In the second study, Srikram and colleagues¹ demonstrated that immunization of hamsters with a single dose of live M1352 was more effective than a dose of heat-killed wild-type strain in protecting hamsters from being killed by the wild-type Manilae strain. The M1352 vaccine also did a better job in preventing colonization of the kidneys by the spirochete and in minimizing lung hemorrhage than the heat-killed vaccine.

When they challenged the vaccinated hamsters with a different serovar, a Pomona strain, all the hamsters immunized with live M1352 survived whereas 60% of animals immunized with heat-killed wild-type Manilae perished.  However the M1352 vaccine didn't work perfectly.  Although all hamsters immunized with live M1352 survived the challenge with the Pomona strain, the kidneys from 90% of the animals were culture positive, and 90% had hemorrhaged lungs.  Nevertheless this is the first time that complete protection from death was observed following challenge of vaccinated animals by a serovar unrelated to the vaccine strain.  They also showed that the M1352 vaccine had to be administered alive.  Heat-killed or chemically-killed M1352 vaccine failed to protect hamsters from lethal infection.

The investigators next tried to figure out which component of the M1352 strain was the protective cross-reactive antigen targeted by the hamster's immune system.  They wondered whether the live M1352 and heat-killed wild-type Manilae vaccines generated antibody responses to different proteins.  When they probed separate two-dimensional blots of L. interrogans membrane preparations of serovar Pomona with antibodies from hamsters immunized with M1352 and heat-killed wild-type Manilae, a number of protein spots lit up.  Most proteins, including LipL32, reacted with both sets of antibodies.  These proteins are unlikely to account for the cross-protection conferred by the M1352 vaccine since the presence of these antibodies in the hamsters immunized with heat-killed Manilae failed to protect the animals from being killed by the Pomona strain.  On the other hand, four Pomona proteins were recognized only by hamsters receiving the attenuated vaccine:

• Loa22, the only surface protein known to be essential for L. interrogans to cause lethal infections⁷
• a homolog of GspG, a component of the type II secretion system
• LA1939, a possible lipoprotein of unknown function
• OmpL36, a surface-exposed outer membrane protein of unknown function⁸

Since GspG is not a surface component of other bacteria and nothing is known about where LA1939 is located on Leptospira, Loa22 and OspL36 are the best candidates to test as potential cross-protective vaccines.

Featured papers

1. Srikram A, Zhang K, Bartpho T, Lo M, Hoke DE, Sermswan RW, Adler B, and Murray GL (March 15, 2011).  Cross-protective immunity against leptospriosis elicited by a live, attenuated lipopolysaccharide mutant.  Journal of Infectious Diseases 203(6):870-879.  DOI: 10.1093/infdis/jiq12


2. Murray GL, Amporn S, Henry R, Hartskeerl RA, Sermswan RW, and Adler B (November 2010).  Mutations affecting Leptospira interrogans lipopolysaccharide attenuate virulence.  Molecular Microbiology 78(3): 701-709.  DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2958.2010.07360.x

Helpful references

3. Guerra MA (February 15, 2009).  Leptospirosis. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 234(4):472-478.  DOI: 10.2460/javma.234.4.472

4. Adler B and de la Pena Moctezuma (January 27, 2010).  Leptospira and leptospirosis.  Veterinary Microbiology 140(3-4):287-296.  DOI: 10.1016/j.vetmic.2009.03.012

5. Silva, ÉF, Medeiros MA, McBride AJA, Matsunaga J, Esteves GS, Ramos JGR, Santos CS, Croda J, Homma A, Dellagostin OA, Haake DA, Reis MG, and Ko AI (August 14, 2007).  The terminal portion of leptospiral immunoglobulin-like protein LigA confers protective immunity against lethal infection in the hamster model of leptospirosis. Vaccine 25(33):6277-6286.  DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2007.05.053

6. McBride AJA, Cerqueira GM, Suchard MA, Moreira MA, Zuerner RL, Reis MG, Haake DA, Ko AI, and Dellagostin OA (March 2009). Infection, Genetics and Evolution 9(2):196-205.  DOI: 10.1016/j.meegid.2008.10.012

7. Ristow P, Bourhy P, da Cruz McBride FW, Figueira CP, Huerre M, Ave P, Girons IS, Ko AI, and Picardeau M (July 2007).  The OmpA-like protein Loa22 is essential for leptospiral virulence. PLoS Pathogens3(7):e97. DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.0030097

8.Pinne M and Haake DA (June 2009).  A comprehensive approach to identification of surface-exposed, outer membrane-spanning proteins of Leptospira interrogans.  PLoS One 4(6):e6071. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006071

Designing a Lyme disease vaccine to attack the tick vector

Conventional vaccines target the surface components or secreted toxins of pathogens.  Erol Fikrig's group at Yale University has been exploring an unconventional approach towards developing a vaccine for Lyme disease, which is caused by a tick-borne pathogen.  Their recent work, published in the November issue of PLoS Pathogens, demonstrated partial success in protecting laboratory mice by immunization with a protein found in the saliva of the Ixodes tick vector.

Ixodes ticks spend several days feeding on blood while attached to the victim's skin.  B. burgdorferi is carried into the victim's skin in the Ixodes tick's saliva starting 3-4 days (on average) after attachment.  Tick saliva contains a blend of biological substances that aid the tick in drinking blood from its victim.  These substances include cement proteins to keep the tick's feeding apparatus tightly bound to the skin, anti-coagulants to keep the blood flowing into the tick, and anti-inflammatory factors that ward off the local inflammatory response.  The activity of these substances also promote transmission of B. burgdorferi from the feeding tick to the victim.  Hence a vaccine that targets a saliva component may protect humans from Lyme disease.

A Lyme vaccine that targets the tick has a few advantages over one that targets the spirochete.  First, a tick-based Lyme disease vaccine is unlikely to interfere with laboratory diagnosis, which currently relies on detection of antibodies against the Lyme Borrelia spirochete.  Second, an effective vaccine that targets the tick may also prevent transmission of other pathogens carried by the Ixodes tick by interfering with tick feeding or with the tick's countermeasures against the host inflammatory response at the feeding site.

In their recent work, the investigators focused their efforts on a salivary protein called tick histamine release factor (tHRF).  Because tHRF levels in the salivary glands of feeding Ixodes ticks were higher when B. burgdorferi was present in the tick, they guessed that tHRF was doing something to help transmit B. burgdorferi from the tick to the victim.  The authors turned out to be correct.  Transmission of B. burgdorferi was impaired when they knocked down the tick's production of tHRF by RNAi.

The investigators went on to test the vaccine potential of tHRF in their mouse model.  They passively immunized mice with antiserum raised against tHRF or actively immunized the rodents with recombinant tHRF.  Actively immunized mice were also given booster injections with tHRF (the paper did not say how many).  Control mice were not immunized.  They then challenged the mice with ticks infected with B. burgdorferi.  One or three weeks later, tissues were removed from the mice, and the bacterial load of B. burgdorferi in skin, heart, and joints was measured by quantitative PCR.

Their data showed that immunization with tHRF was somewhat effective.  Depending on the experiment, B. burgdorferi DNA could not be detected in any of the three tissues in 20-33% of immunized mice, whereas the spirochete's DNA was detected in at least one tissue in all control mice.  Even in immunized mice with detectable B. burgdorferi DNA, the levels were often lower than the average level found in the control mice.  It would have been nice to know how much inflammation was present in the tissues of the immunized mice.  Unfortunately, the histopathology of the tissues was not presented in the paper.

Figure 4, panels E-G from Dai et al., 2010.  Bacterial burden in skin (day 7 after challenge) and joint and heart (day 21) was determined by quantitative PCR with flaB primers.  Horizonal lines represent the mean value ± SEM.  * p < 0.05 and ** p < 0.01.  Results were pooled from 3 independent experiments.

tHRF is not the first Lyme vaccine candidate to target a protein found in tick saliva.  An earlier report from Fikrig's group demonstrated that active and passive immunization with Salp15, another tick salivary protein, was also somewhat effective in protecting mice from colonization with B. burgdorferi.  tHRF was superior to Salp15 in impairing feeding by ticks. Ticks feeding on Salp15-immunized mice were able to complete their blood meal.  In contrast, most of the ticks had a hard time feeding on mice immunized with tHRF and could not complete their blood meal, as assessed by tick weights following detachment from the mice.

Although immunization with tHRF and Salp15 prevented colonization in only some mice, Fikrig's work shows for the first time that it may be possible to design a Lyme disease vaccine that targets the tick vector.  Ultimately, the most effective vaccine may be a mixture that targets multiple components in both the tick and the spirochete.

References

Dai, J., Narasimhan, S., Zhang, L., Liu, L., Wang, P., & Fikrig, E. (2010). Tick histamine release factor is critical for Ixodes scapularis engorgement and transmission of the Lyme disease agent PLoS Pathogens, 6 (11) DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1001205

Dai, J., Wang, P., Adusumilli, S., Booth, C.J., Narasimhan, S., Anguita, J., & Fikrig, E. (2009). Antibodies against a tick protein, Salp15, protect mice from the Lyme disease agent. Cell Host & Microbe, 6 (5), 482-492 DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2009.10.006

Related post

• A fresh approach towards a Lyme disease vaccine: targeting the tick

A fresh approach towards a Lyme disease vaccine: targeting the tick

We tend to focus on the pathogen when thinking about how the immune system responds to tick-borne infections.  Ticks also provoke an immune response, even those that don't harbor any infectious agent.  Animals that are repeatedly bitten by ticks will eventually develop immunity to the tick.  There's even a commercial tick vaccine called TickGARD, which protects cattle against infestation by the tick Boophilus microplus.  TickGARD is formulated with a protein located in the midgut of B. microplus.

Animals that are immune to ticks also resist infection by some tick-borne pathogens, including Borrelia burgdorferi (Nazario et al., 1998).  Vaccines designed from a single tick component may also protect host animals from infectious agents.  A tick vaccine formulated with the tick cement protein 64TRP protected mice from being killed by the tick-borne encephalitis virus introduced by its vector, Ixodes ricinus (Labuda et al., 2006).

These earlier studies prompted Erol Fikrig's group at Yale to devise a vaccine that targets an Ixodes tick protein required by B. burgdorferi for a successful infection.  They focused on Salp15, a protein found in tick saliva.  Salp15 binds to the B. burgdorferi surface protein OspC as the spirochete passes through the salivary gland on its way into the skin of the victim.  Salp15 is one of the many bioactive salivary proteins that dampen the immune system to allow the tick to remain attached for several days so that it could complete its blood meal.  B. burgdorferi exploits Salp15 to fend off the immune response in the early stages of infection.  Since Salp15 coats B. burgdorferi, a vaccine targeting Salp15 could make B. burgdorferi vulnerable to killing by the immune system.  Indeed, Salp15 antiserum was able to enhance phagocytosis of Salp15-coated B. burgdorferi by mouse macrophages in vitro.

Despite the promising in vitro results, Salp15 as a vaccine was only partially protective in animal studies.  55-60% of mice actively immunized with Salp15 or passively immunized with Salp15 antiserum ended up infected with B. burgdorferi following challenge with infected Ixodes scapularis ticks.  Moreover, ticks were able to feed normally on mice immunized with Salp15, indicating that the animals did not acquire tick immunity.

Where Salp15 shined was in improving the efficacy of another Lyme vaccine.  The OspA vaccine requires several doses to achieve maximum protection against B. burgdorferi.  When Salp15 was combined with OspA, a single dose of the mixture spared 70% of mice from infection, whereas only 10-20% of mice immunized with a single dose of OspA or OspA plus Salp25D (an irrelevant tick salivary protein) were protected.  Thus future Lyme disease vaccines that target a component of the spirochete could also include Salp15 to enhance their protective capacity.

Scientists are undoubtedly examining other tick proteins as potential vaccines against ticks and the pathogens they transmit.

Featured paper

Dai, J., Wang, P., Adusumilli, S., Booth, C.J., Narasimhan, S., Anguita, J., and Fikrig, E. (November 19, 2009).  Antibodies against a tick protein, Salp15, protect mice from the Lyme disease agent.  Cell Host & Microbe 6:482-492.  DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2009.10.006

Other references

Labuda, M., Trimnell, A.R., Licková, M., Kazimírová, M.,Davies, G.M., Lissina, O., Hails, R.S., and Nuttall, P.A. (April 2006).  An antivector vaccine protects against a lethal vector-borne pathogen.  PLoS Pathogens 2(4):e27.  DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.0020027

Nazario, S., Das, S., De Silva, A.M., Deponte, K., Marcantonio, N., Anderson, J.F., Fish, D., Fikrig, E., and Kantor, F.S. (June 1998).  Prevention of Borrelia burgdorferi transmission in guinea pigs by tick immunity.  American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 58(6):780-785.  Link