Syntheses of Salmonella Paratyphi A Associated Oligosaccharide Antigens and Development Towards Anti-Paratyphoid Fever Vaccines

AUTHORS

Debashis DharaScott M BalibanChang-Xin HuoZahra RashidijahanabadKhandra T SearsSetare Tahmasebi NickAnup Kumar MisraSharon M TennantXuefei Huang 

ABSTRACT

With the emergence of multidrug resistant Salmonella strains, the development of anti- Salmonella vaccines is an important task. Currently there are no approved vaccines against Salmonella Paratyphi A, the leading cause of paratyphoid fever. To fill this gap, oligosaccharides corresponding to the O -polysaccharide repeating units from the surface of Salmonella Paratyphi A have been synthesized through convergent stereoselective glycosylations. The synthetic glycan antigen was conjugated with a powerful immunogenic carrier system, the bacteriophage Qβ. The resulting construct was able to elicit strong and long-lasting anti-glycan IgG antibody responses, which were highly selective toward Salmonella Paratyphi A associated glycans. The availability of well-defined glycan antigen enabled the determination that one repeating unit of the polysaccharide is sufficient to induce protective antibodies, and the paratose residue and/or the O -acetyl modifications on the backbone are important for recognition by antibodies elicited by a Qβ-tetrasaccharide conjugate. Immune sera provided excellent protection to mice from lethal challenge with Salmonella Paratyphi A, highlighting the potential of the synthetic glycan-based vaccine.

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