Using salmonella to administer vaccines
A team of researchers has engineered a live form of salmonella that can deliver a vaccine. The modified bacterium eliminates all the things you don’t want in salmonella, the leading cause of food-borne illness. It’s also designed to destroy itself so that it’s not released into the environment. In the petri-dish experiment, tame salmonella delivered a portion of S. pneumoniae bacterium to cells and stimulated an immune response. Another possible benefit, if the technique works in animals and humans:
Unlike most vaccines that are entirely manufactured by a vaccine company, the attenuated recombinant salmonella vaccine after entry into the immunized individual serves as its own factory to produce (manufacture) the protective antigens (proteins) from the S. pneumoniae pathogen. This ability to cause manufacture in the immunized individual dramatically decreases the cost of such vaccines to make them affordable for use in the developing world, [Arizona State professor Roy] Curtiss said.
[Image: Salmonella invades human cells by Nutloaf]
