Immunogenicity characterization of the multi-epitope vaccine CTB-UE with chitosan-CpG as combination adjuvants against Helicobacter pylori

Properties and applications of nanoparticle/microparticle conveyors with adjuvant characteristics suitable for oral vaccination

Vaccination is one of the most effective approaches in the prevention and control of disease worldwide. Oral vaccination could have wide applications if effective protection cannot be achieved through traditional (eg, parenteral) routes of vaccination. However, oral administration is hampered by the difficulties in transferring vaccines in vivo. This has led to the development of materials such as carriers with potential adjuvant effects. Considering the requirements for selecting adjuvants for oral vaccines as well as the advantages of nanoparticle/microparticle materials as immune effectors and antigen conveyors, synthetic materials could improve the efficiency of oral vaccination. In this review, nanoparticles and microparticles with adjuvant characteristics are described with regard to their potential importance for oral immunization, and some promising and successful modification strategies are summarized.

Chemical Synthesis, Versatile Structures and Functions of Tailorable Adjuvants for Optimizing Oral Vaccination

Oral vaccines have become a recent focus because of their potential significance in disease prevention and therapy. In the development of oral vaccine-based therapeutics, synthetic materials with tailorable structures and versatile functions can act as antigen conveyers with adjuvant effects, reduce the time cost for vaccine optimization, and provide high security and enhanced immunity. This review presents an overview of the current status of tailoring synthetic adjuvants for oral vaccination, modification strategies for producing effectors with specific structures and functions, enhancement of immune-associated efficiencies, including the barrier-crossing capability to protect antigens in the gastrointestinal tract, coordination of the antigens penetrating mucosa and cell barriers, targeting of concentrated antigens to immune-associated cells, and direct stimulation of immune cells. Finally, we focus on prospective synthetic adjuvants that facilitate the use of oral vaccines via two approaches, namely, in vivo antigen expression and cancer immunotherapy.

The fed-batch principle for the molecular biology lab: controlled nutrient diets in ready-made media improve production of recombinant proteins in Escherichia coli

While the nutrient limited fed-batch technology is the standard of the cultivation of microorganisms and production of heterologous proteins in industry, despite its advantages in view of metabolic control and high cell density growth, shaken batch cultures are still the standard for protein production and expression screening in molecular biology and biochemistry laboratories. This is due to the difficulty and expenses to apply a controlled continuous glucose feed to shaken cultures. New ready-made growth media, e.g. by biocatalytic release of glucose from a polymer, offer a simple solution for the application of the fed-batch principle in shaken plate and flask cultures. Their wider use has shown that the controlled diet not only provides a solution to obtain significantly higher cell yields, but also in many cases folding of the target protein is improved by the applied lower growth rates; i.e. final volumetric yields for the active protein can be a multiple of what is obtained in complex medium cultures. The combination of the conventional optimization approaches with new and easy applicable growth systems has revolutionized recombinant protein production in Escherichia coli in view of product yield, culture robustness as well as significantly increased cell densities. This technical development establishes the basis for successful miniaturization and parallelization which is now an important tool for synthetic biology and protein engineering approaches. This review provides an overview of the recent developments, results and applications of advanced growth systems which use a controlled glucose release as substrate supply.

Update on prevention and treatment of Helicobacter pylori infection

From the first isolation of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) from the gastric mucosa by Marshall and Warren in 1983, 33 years have passed. H. pylori has been found to be closely associated not only with chronic gastric diseases but also with multiple system diseases. Advances in research of H. pylori infection has led to a better understanding of the pathogenicity of H. pylori and the prevention and treatment of related disease. In 2015, Professor Zou's team developed oral recombinant H. pylori vaccine, which is promising in the prevention of H. pylori infection. Japan aims to reduce the risk of H. pylori infection in the whole population in 2014 to reduce the incidence of gastric cancer, which has caused widespread concern. H. pylori infection is a kind of infectious disease, and the infection rate in China is about 56%.Therefore, it is of great clinical importance to strengthen the research on bacteriology and pathogenesis of H. pylori, improve the prevention and treatment related diseases, and seek antibacterial regimens with better efficacy and lower drug resistance.

An antigen-specific, four-color, B-cell FluoroSpot assay utilizing tagged antigens for detection

The FluoroSpot assay, a variant of ELISpot utilizing fluorescent detection, has so far been used primarily for assessment of T cells, where simultaneous detection of several cytokines has allowed a more qualitative analysis of functionally distinct T cells. The potential to measure multiple analytes also presents several advantages when analyzing B cells. Our aim was to develop a B-cell FluoroSpot assay adaptable to studies of a variety of antigens. The assay utilizes anti-IgG antibodies immobilized in 96-well filter membrane plates. During cell culture, IgG antibodies secreted by antibody-secreting cells (ASCs) are captured in the vicinity of each of these cells and the specificity of single ASCs is defined using antigens for detection. The antigens were labeled with biotin or peptide tags enabling secondary detection with fluorophore-conjugated streptavidin or tag-specific antibodies. The assay, utilizing up to four different tag systems and fluorophores simultaneously, was evaluated using hybridomas and immunized splenocytes as ASCs. Assay variants were developed that could: i) identify multiple ASCs with different antigen specificities; ii) detect ASCs showing cross-reactivity with different but related antigens; and iii) define the antigen-specificity and, by including anti-IgG subclass detection reagents, simultaneously determine the IgG subclass of antibodies secreted by ASCs. As demonstrated here, the B-cell FluoroSpot assay using tag-based detection systems provides a versatile and powerful tool to investigate antibody responses by individual cells that can be readily adapted to studies of a variety of antigen-specific ASCs.