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Biological Chemistry

New vaccine candidate for leishmaniasis

May 1, 2006 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 84, Issue 18

A new type of carbohydrate vaccine candidate has been developed for leishmaniasis, a protozoan tropical disease that causes serious disfigurement and an estimated 60,000 deaths per year. There are currently no effective vaccines, but Peter H. Seeberger's group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, and colleagues at the Swiss Tropical Institute, Basel, and Pevion Biotech, Bern, have now developed a promising candidate (ACS Chem. Biol. 2006, 1, 161). They prepared synthetic carbohydrates resembling a leishmania antigen, made them immunologically active by linking them to both a phospholipid and a flu-virus coat protein, and then incorporated the conjugate into immunostimulating reconstituted influenza virosomes (IRIVs, liposomes with virus-derived lipid membranes). The formulations elicited a potentially long-lived (T-cell-dependent) antibody response in mice, and the antibodies recognize and react with native leishmania antigens. The results represent the first evidence that IRIVs have "great potential for the design of safe and effective synthetic carbohydrate vaccines," the researchers write. Such vaccines "should find application for diseases, including bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections and cancer," they add.

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