AUTHOR=Scully Ingrid L., Liberator Paul A., Jansen Kathrin U., Anderson Annaliesa S.

TITLE=Covering all the Bases: Preclinical Development of an Effective Staphylococcus aureus Vaccine

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Immunology

VOLUME=5

YEAR=2014

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2014.00109

DOI=10.3389/fimmu.2014.00109

ISSN=1664-3224

ABSTRACT=<p>A key aspect of the pathogenesis of the Gram positive bacterium <italic>Staphylococcus aureus</italic> is its ability to rapidly adapt to the host environment during the course of an infection. To successfully establish infection, the organism deploys a variety of survival and immune evasion strategies, ranging from the acquisition of essential nutrients and expression of adhesins, which promote colonization and survival, to the elaboration of virulence factors such as capsule, which aids host immune evasion. The ability of <italic>S. aureus</italic> to deploy different virulence factors must be taken into account for <italic>S. aureus</italic> vaccine design. Here, we present a strategy for designing an effective vaccine against <italic>S. aureus</italic> disease by evaluating vaccine candidate performance in multiple <italic>in vivo</italic> models targeted to mimic aspects of human disease, and by co-development of functional <italic>in vitro</italic> immunoassays that measure the neutralization of relevant <italic>S. aureus</italic> virulence factors.</p>