Most pathogenic bacteria express surface carbohydrates called capsular polysaccharides (CPSs). CPSs are important vaccine candidates given that they are located on the outermost surface of bacteria and have distinct structures. These two features make them easily accessible and distinctly recognizable by immune surveillance, therefore resulting in the production of CPS-specific antibodies by B cells. To induce a CPS-specific adaptive immune response (i.e., T cell-mediated B cell response), CPSs are conjugated with carrier proteins, and the conjugation products are called glycoconjugate vaccines. Due to insufficient understanding of their immune activation mechanisms, current glycoconjugate vaccine strategies have reached saturation and are largely modifications of past empirical conjugation methods. The production of the current generation of glycoconjugate vaccines is based on trial and error and does not make use of specific scientific knowledge to maximize stimulation of critical immune cells (i.e., helper T cells) involved in producing protective IgG antibodies. A new perspective on carbohydrate-based vaccine research is much needed. With the potential of establishing a new paradigm, our previous and current data demonstrate that the mammalian CD4+ T cell repertoire contains a population of T cells that recognize carbohydrate epitopes of glycoconjugate vaccines, called Tcarbs. Building on our mechanistic work, we are in the process of establishing a platform to design and develop structurally defined glycoconjugate vaccines optimized for their immunogenic and antigenic components to elicit protective immunity consistently and effectively.

Knowledge based glycoconjugate vaccine design

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ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.