Poster Presentation 13th Australian Peptide Conference 2019

Bile acid-liposomes as a new delivery system for peptide-based vaccine against Group A Streptococcus (#109)

Armira Azuar 1 , Lili Zhao 1 , Tsui Ting Hei 1 , Reshma Nevagi 1 , Stacey Bartlett 1 , Waleed Hussein 1 2 , Zeinab Khalil 3 , Robert J. Capon 3 , Istvan Toth 1 3 4 , Mariusz Skwarczynski 1
  1. School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, Malaysia
  2. Pharmaceutical Organic Chemistry Department, Helwan University, Helwan, Egypt
  3. Institute of Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, Malaysia
  4. School of Pharmacy, The University of Queensland, Woolloongabba, QLD, Malaysia

Group A Streptococcus (GAS) infection causes a variety of diseases in human, ranging from a benign throat infection to life-threatening rheumatic fever (RF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD).  However, there is no vaccines currently available on the market. Due to the autoimmune response associated with M-protein (major virulent factor for GAS), modern peptide-based vaccines approach has been widely investigated to develop safe vaccine against GAS [1].  This peptide-based vaccine require immunostimulant (adjuvant) and/or delivery system to protect the antigenic peptide from degradation and induce the desired immunity [2]. Adjuvants in the market are either too toxic for human use (experimental adjuvants) or they are limited to particular applications (commercial adjuvants) [3]. Thus, we design vaccine candidates that utilise J8 B-cell epitope and PADRE T-helper epitopes that were anchored to liposome via cholic acid [4]. Upon intranasal immunisation in mice, this bile acid conjugated peptide (in nanoparticle form and in liposomal formulation) was capable of inducing the production of high antibody titres that were opsonic against GAS clinical isolates. Thus, bile acid-liposomes provided a promising delivery system with built-in immunoadjuvant properties for simple intranasal vaccination.

  1. Azuar, A., Jin, W., Mukaida, S., Hussein, W. M., Skwarczynski, M., and Toth, I. “Recent advances in the development of peptide vaccines and their delivery systems against Group A Streptococcus”, Vaccines, 2019, submitted.
  2. Skwarczynski, M.; Toth, I., Peptide-based synthetic vaccines. Chemical Science 2016, 7; pp. 842-854.
  3. Nevagi, R. J.; Toth, I.; Skwarczynski, M., Peptide-based vaccines. In Peptide Applications in Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Bioengineering; S. Koutsopoulos Ed.; Woodhead Publishing, 2018; pp. 327-358.
  4. Azuar, A., Zhao, L., Hei, T. T., Nevagi, R. J., Bartlett S., Hussein, W. M., Khalil, Z. G., Capon, R. J., Toth, I., and Skwarczynski, M. “Cholic acid-based delivery system for vaccine candidates against Group A Streptococcus”, ACS Med. Chem. Lett., 2019, submitted.