Antibiotic overuse in animal farms has fueled the production and propagation of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains. An exciting possibility is to replace antibiotic use with antibodies. Such strategies have been developed; however, current processes are too expensive to compete with antibiotic usage. To increase the yield of effective antibodies, increased vaccine construct efficacy is needed. Still, incomplete understanding of how to combine vaccine elements that promote B and T cell communication and yield enhanced antibody production is a major barrier to developing effective responses. To address this deficiency, we are using the ring opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) to make chemically defined multivalent antigens bearing B and T cell epitopes to robustly generate antibodies. We found that a controlled T cell epitope release mechanism in tandem with high B cell epitope valency enhanced IgG responses. In this way, we have determined key design parameters for synthetic vaccines that induce strong antibody responses against poor immunogens. We are applying our polymeric designs to generate subunit vaccines that yield increased antibody titers to replace the use of antibiotics in agriculture.

Modular polymeric antigens as antibiotic replacements

256th National Meeting (2018)

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