Meta-analysis of variables affecting mouse protection efficacy of whole organism Brucella vaccines and vaccine candidates

Macêdo

et al. 2015

Clin. Vaccine Immunol.

dThis study aimed to evaluate the Brucella ovis ⌬abcBA strain as a vaccine candidate in the murine model. BALB/c mice were subcutaneously or intraperitoneally immunized with a single dose or three doses of the B. ovis ⌬abcBA strain and then were challenged with wild-type B. ovis. Single or multiple immunizations provided only mild protection, with significantly smaller numbers of wild-type B. ovis CFU in the livers of immunized mice but not in the spleens. Encapsulation of B. ovis ⌬abcBA significantly improved protection against experimental challenges in both BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice. Furthermore, immunization with encapsulated B. ovis ⌬abcBA markedly prevented lesions in the spleens and livers of experimentally challenged mice. These results demonstrated that the encapsulated B. ovis ⌬abcBA strain confers protection to mice; therefore, this strain has potential as a vaccine candidate for rams. Brucella ovis is a facultative, intracellular, Gram-negative coccobacillus (1) that causes economic losses due to its potential to induce reproductive failure in sheep (2, 3). The most important lesions caused by B. ovis in rams are epididymitis and seminal vesiculitis (4), and B. ovis occasionally causes abortion in ewes (5, 6).In spite of attempts to develop safe, effective vaccines (7-10), there is no available vaccine specifically against B. ovis. The ideal vaccine against B. ovis must prevent infection and clinical signs or at least reduce the risk of infection and transmission (11). Rev-1, a live attenuated Brucella melitensis strain, is the most commonly used vaccine against B. melitensis, and it also protects against B. ovis (12). However, the Rev-1 strain retains pathogenic potential, so it is capable of infecting humans. It may cause abortions in ruminants, it may interfere with serological tests, and it is resistant to streptomycin (13,14).Mice have been extensively used as a model for brucellosis, which is very important due to the limitations of experimentation with larger animals (15-18). The murine model has allowed studies for the development of safe, effective brucellosis vaccines (15,19,20).Inactivation of a predicted abcEDCBA-encoded ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter of B. ovis (21), which is located in B. ovis pathogenicity island 1 (BOPI-1), results in strong attenuation of this pathogen in the murine model (22). Although the substrate of this ABC transporter is not known, it is required for expression of B. ovis virulence proteins, including Omp31, Sod, and the virB-encoded type IV secretion system (23), which is required for B. ovis intracellular survival and in vivo persistence (17). Furthermore, a B. ovis ⌬abcBA strain is capable of triggering humoral and cellular immune responses like the wild-type strain in rams; importantly, however, the mutant strain is not excreted in semen and urine (24). Therefore, this mutant strain has great potential as an attenuated vaccine strain. However, considering that the ⌬abcBA mutant strain is attenuated at very early stages during infection, resulting in p...

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protection Provided by an Encapsulated Live Attenuated ΔabcBAStrain of Brucella ovis against Experimental Challenge in a Murine Model

Macêdo

et al. 2015

Clin. Vaccine Immunol.

Expert Review of Vaccines

“…A clear representation of temporal periods between processes is also required. In a recent study [85], nearly 20 variables were identified to logically represent the vaccine protection study. The 20 variables provide a prototype of minimal information for analysis of vaccine protection.…”

Section: Expert Commentarymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One example of ontology-based statistical meta-analysis is an ontology modeling and meta-analysis of different variables contributing to the vaccine efficacy of whole organism Brucella vaccines using the mouse model [85,87]. In this study, based on the identification of 19 variables ( e.g.…”

Section: Expert Commentarymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such a study also found new counter-intuitive results. For example, the meta-analysis has demonstrated that intraperitoneal and subcutaneous vaccinations are much more effective in protecting against aerosol Brucella challenge compared to intranasal vaccination [85]. …”

Section: Expert Commentarymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ontology-based statistical meta-analysis as exemplified in the above Brucella vaccine efficacy use case [85,87] can also be applied for complex Omics meta-analysis such as those related to the systems vaccinology studies [27]. Basically, the ontology methods can be used to standardize the variables and relations among variables, normalize related data types, and provide a platform for standardized and efficient statistical data analysis.…”

Section: Expert Commentarymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ontology-supported research on vaccine efficacy, safety and integrative biological networks

2014

Self Cite

Summary While vaccine efficacy and safety research has dramatically progressed with the methods of in silico prediction and data mining, many challenges still exist. A formal ontology is a human- and computer-interpretable set of terms and relations that represent entities in a specific domain and how these terms relate to each other. Several community-based ontologies (including the Vaccine Ontology, Ontology of Adverse Events, and Ontology of Vaccine Adverse Events) have been developed to support vaccine and adverse event representation, classification, data integration, literature mining of host-vaccine interaction networks, and analysis of vaccine adverse events. The author further proposes minimal vaccine information standards and their ontology representations, ontology-based linked open vaccine data and meta-analysis, an integrative One Network (“OneNet”) Theory of Life, and ontology-based approaches to study and apply the OneNet theory. In the Big Data era, these proposed strategies provide a novel framework for advanced data integration and analysis of fundamental biological networks including vaccine immune mechanisms.

Drug Development Research

Omics‐Based Systems Vaccinology for Vaccine Target Identification

2012

Self Cite

Preclinical Research Omics technologies include genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and immunomics. These technologies have been used in vaccine research, which can be summarized using the term “vaccinomics.” These omics technologies combined with advanced bioinformatics analysis form the core of “systems vaccinology.” Omics technologies provide powerful methods in vaccine target identification. The genomics‐based reverse vaccinology starts with predicting vaccine protein candidates through in silico bioinformatics analysis of genome sequences. The VIOLIN Vaxign vaccine design program (http://www.violinet.org/vaxign) is the first web‐based vaccine target prediction software based on the reverse vaccinology strategy. Systematic transcriptomics and proteomics analyses facilitate rational vaccine target identification by detesting genome‐wide gene expression profiles. Immunomics is the study of the set of antigens recognized by host immune systems and has also been used for efficient vaccine target prediction. With the large amount of omics data available, it is necessary to integrate various vaccine data using ontologies, including the Gene Ontology (GO) and Vaccine Ontology (VO), for more efficient vaccine target prediction and assessment. All these omics technologies combined with advanced bioinformatics analysis methods for a systems biology‐based vaccine target prediction strategy. This article reviews the various omics technologies and how they can be used in vaccine target identification.