Research team receives funding to develop Campylobacter vaccine

Researchers at the University of Oxford are part of a team that has received a grant to develop vaccines against Campylobacter.

The project also involves researchers at Centre Suisse de Recherche Scientifique in Cote d’Ivoire; the Medical Research Council Unit, The Gambia; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; and the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research.

The Ineos Oxford Institute has received a £5 million ($6.1 million) Wellcome Discovery Award to develop vaccines against pathogens that cause diarrhea. Diarrheal diseases are a major threat to public health, especially for children in low and middle income countries (LMICs).

Campylobacter is the most common bacterial cause of diarrhea. It is prevalent in livestock such as poultry, cattle, pigs, and sheep and can be transmitted to humans via contaminated water and food, especially chicken meat. However, there is under-reporting and declining antibiotic effectiveness.

The process of disease transmission is unclear because Campylobacter is very common in the guts of wild and domestic animals and can be transmitted easily to humans. Limited laboratory and diagnostics facilities, and low patient attendance at health facilities in LMICs make it hard for scientists to study the disease and find treatments.

Vaccine for animals
Sam Sheppard, principal investigator of the Ineos Oxford Institute’s digital microbiology program, will lead the work.

Sheppard said the network of 19 countries and nine African co-investigators will allow the creation of a global genomic surveillance hub to track the spread of diarrheal diseases.

“Contemporary meta-genomic epidemiology techniques will help us understand cryptic disease networks and track how the disease is transmitted from animals to humans,” he said.

“We need to ensure that the vaccine that we develop is stable, affordable and effective — that is the only way that there will be successful uptake, especially in low-and-middle income countries. Using the data collected in trials, we will monitor the effectiveness of the vaccine and quantify the impact of multiple factors to optimize vaccine delivery.”

Project partners will create a framework of meta-genomic epidemiology surveillance. This approach is used to monitor and track the spread of infectious diseases by analyzing the genetic material of all microorganisms present in a sample, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. The team will study the genetic make-up of Campylobacter populations recovered from hospital and farm sites, and use the data to develop a vaccine for animals to interrupt the transmission chain and prevent the spread of Campylobacter to humans.

Four focus areas
Pilot research has already taken place in The Gambia, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Peru. The team will expand this work across Africa, where local partners will collect samples from infected people, wild and domestic animals, meat from supermarkets, and the natural environment like waterbodies.

Georgia Walton, research manager in discovery research at Wellcome, said: “We’re excited to follow the research, which shows the potential to be highly impactful for public health by preventing the spread of this diarrheal disease, with a clear vision on building capacity and training the next generation so that the data and tools can be applied to vaccine development more broadly.”

The team will work with industrial partners to investigate antibody responses in bacteria samples.

Results will allow scientists to identify vaccine targets and develop a glycoconjugate vaccine – a type of vaccine that combines a carbohydrate (sugar) molecule with a protein to enhance the immune response.

There are four focus areas. The first is novel (meta)genomics and bioinformatics approaches and the second involves identifying target antigens within problematic strains. Thirdly, omics data and modelling approaches will be used to digitally engineer optimized vaccines and finally livestock vaccines that protect against Campylobacter and Salmonella will be produced and tested.

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Source: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2025/01/research-team-receives-funding-to-develop-campylobacter-vaccine/