Development of a Bacterial Ghost DNA vaccine for Influenza using antibody epitope

描述（由申请人提供）：流感流行和大流行是对人类健康的主要威胁。疫苗接种是控制每年和新出现的流感大流行的主要策略。目前的流感疫苗平台和生产系统是不灵活的、缓慢的、昂贵的，并且不能对新出现的病毒株迅速作出反应。因此，迫切需要快速开发和生产流感疫苗的新技术。考虑到这些挑战，该提案旨在证明实施结合细菌鬼，DNA微环和基于蛋白质组学的抗体表位作图的新技术的疫苗策略的可行性。蛋白质组学技术将用于使用暴露于H1蛋白或含H1病毒的动物血清快速鉴定流感H1蛋白中的抗体结合表位。所得表位将用于开发和生产具有固定化小环DNA构建体的细菌菌影疫苗。近年来，细菌菌影被用作DNA微环疫苗的载体和刺激物，并取得了良好的效果。DNA微环消除了质粒DNA疫苗接种中涉及的许多风险，并以一步低成本生产工艺掺入BG中。动物将接受使用生产的细菌菌影疫苗的计划接种方案，并评估免疫应答。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Influenza epidemics and pandemics are major threats to human health. Vaccination is the primary strategy for the control of annual and emerging influenza pandemics. Present influenza vaccine platforms and production systems are inflexible, slow, expensive, and cannot rapidly respond to an emerging strain of virus. Thus, new technologies for the rapid development and production of influenza vaccines are urgently needed. With these challenges in mind this proposal is aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of implementing a vaccine strategy combining the novel technologies of Bacterial Ghosts, DNA minicircles, and proteomics-based antibody epitope mapping. Proteomics technologies will be used to rapidly identify antibody binding epitopes in the influenza H1 protein using sera from animals exposed to H1 protein or H1 containing virus. The resulting epitopes will be used to develop and produce Bacterial Ghost vaccines with immobilized minicircle DNA constructs. Bacterial Ghosts have recently been used as carriers and stimulators of DNA minicircle vaccines with promising results. DNA minicircles eliminate many of the risks involved in vaccination with plasmid DNA and are incorporated into BG in a one-step low cost production process. Animals will undergo a scheduled vaccination scheme using the produced Bacterial Ghost vaccines and the immune response will be assessed.