Poster Presentation 13th Australian Peptide Conference 2019

Development an oral based delivery system for peptide vaccine against Group A Streptococcus (GAS). (#140)

Mohammad Omer Faruck 1 , Mariusz Skwarczynski 1 , Istvan Toth 1
  1. University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

GAS infection are responsible for over 500,0001 deaths each year, and this number is still increasing. Vaccination is considered as a useful approach to enhance the host immunity against infection, and it has helped to prevent and even eradicate many infectious diseases so far. Herein we developed a potent peptide-polymer based vaccine against GAS infection. Our fully synthetic peptide vaccine candidates against group A streptococcus (GAS) were composed of J8 GAS B-cell epitope alongside with a universal helper T-cell epitope PADRE. Alkyne based peptide (J8-PADRE) was conjugated with azide based polymer named Poly methyl acrylate (PMA) by Copper-Catalyzed Alkyne-Azide Cycloaddition (CuAAC). PMA-J8-PADRE formed nanoparticle size (146±8) and PDI (0.190±0.02) measured using dynamic light scattering (DLS). PMA is one of the most widely explored bio-medical polymers because of its biocompatibility2. Lipids including 1,2-dihexadecanoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC), Didodecyldimethylammonium bromide ( DDAB) was used for liposome formulation and PMA-J8-PADRE loaded into liposome. The liposomes were coated with a layer by layer approach based on charge-charge interaction between cationic trimethyl chitosan (TMC) and anionic Sodium alginate (Alg)3, vaccine candidates alone and CTB-adjuvants. Mice (C57/BL) were immunized with seven different compounds by oral gavage. PBS was used as negative control with a single oral immunization (100μg of the respective vaccines in 30μL PBS).  All groups of mice that received GAS vaccine developed anti-GAS antibodies as determined by ELISA. The addition of CTB did not result in greater anti-GAS antibody titres. In fact, mice immunized without CTB had greater anti-GAS antibody titres than mice immunized with CTB because CTB can lower the immune response to oral vaccination4. Liposomes and coating liposomes did not enhance vaccine efficacy, thus we demonstrated that single antigen-polymer conjugate. The enhanced vaccine efficacy, lowered dose, and simple and cost-effective process of producing the coated nanoliposomes should be particularly useful in developing potent peptide-based vaccines to prevent infection.