You are part of the team that is attempting to develop a vaccine to prevent an i

Question

You are part of the team that is attempting to develop a vaccine to prevent an infection due to the mythical gram- negative extracellular bacterium, Brennanella Harissii, which causes nephritis as the result of its thick capsule and production of an exotoxin that causes destruction of nephrons in the kidney.

1. What type of vaccine would you develop and why?

2. Would you use an adjuvant? why or why not?

3. Would booster shots be required? why or why not?

4. What particular components of the immune system would you be trying to stimulate and why?

Explanation / Answer

1. For such an extracellular bacterium which has a thick capsule that secretes exotoxin, the vaccines produced would be a genetically engineered outer membrane of the bacterial capsule or growing bacterium in vitro to develop the membrance vesicles. Creating a vaccine with surface antigen similar to those of the capsule will cause the vaccine to mimic the pathogen without actually causing nephritis. This will, therefore, elicit a similar immune response from the host without causing a full-blown infection.

2. For this vaccine, to improve the efficiency of the surface antigen, I would consider using an adjuvant. This is to improve the antigenicity of the vaccine to elicit a successful immune response and raise antibodies against the capsule proteins and surface antigens.Creating a membrane vesicle adjuvant like the OMV (outer membrane vesicle) adjuvant for Hepatitis B surface antigen is the strategy I would consider for this vaccine.

3. I would recommend booster shots as the vaccine is made up of protein surface antigens and boosters can, therefore, ensure protection against from few different variants of the protein antigen strain.

4. The vaccines would be looking to elicit a humoral response in the body. What this implies is that when vaccinated the patient would cause the B cells in the body to transform into plasma cells. The reason for this response would be for the plasma cells to them produce specific antibodies or immunoglobulins against the surface antigen.

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