The recent influenza vaccine shortages have provided a timely reminder of the tenuous nature of the world's vaccine supply and the potential for manufacturing issues to severely disrupt vital access to important vaccines. The application of new technologies to the discovery, assessment, development and production of vaccines has the potential to prevent such occurrences and enable the introduction of new vaccines. Gene-based vaccines, virus-like particles, plant-derived vaccines and novel adjuvants and delivery systems represent promising approaches to creating safer, more potent vaccines. As a consequence, more people will have faster access to more effective vaccines against a broader spectrum of infectious diseases. However, the increased cost of producing new vaccines and regulatory uncertainty remain challenges for vaccine manufacturers.

/pdf/vaccine-manufacturing-challenges-and-solutions-rfmf1u9om8.pdf

Vaccine manufacturing: challenges and solutions

In vitro correlate of immunity in a rabbit model of inhalational anthrax.

Defining a serological correlate of protection in rabbits for a recombinant anthrax vaccine.

The etiological agent of anthrax disease in animals and humans is the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis. The major factors of virulence of B. anthracis are located on two plasmids, pXO1 and pXO2. pXO2 encodes a poly-d-glutamic acid capsule (19, 41), while pXO1 encodes two binary exotoxins, the lethal toxin (LT) and the edema toxin (ET) (43, 46, 61). These two toxins are composed of three different proteins: protective antigen (PA), edema factor (EF), and lethal factor (LF) (for a review, see reference 36). PA is the common receptor binding domain of the toxins and can interact with the two different effector domains, EF and LF, to mediate their entry into target cells (14). EF is a calmodulin-dependent adenylate cyclase (37) responsible for the edema seen at the site of infection in experimental animals (17). The LF is a metalloprotease (34) recently shown to cleave the amino termini of the mitogen-activated protein kinase kinases 1 and 2, which results in their inactivation (13). It remains to be determined whether these are the main physiological substrates for the LT activity in vivo (5, 22).

Two types of anthrax vaccines are licensed for use in humans: the spores of the toxigenic, nonencapsulated B. anthracis STI-1 strain (55) and the cell-free PA-based vaccines consisting of aluminum hydroxide-adsorbed supernatant material from cultures of the toxigenic, nonencapsulated B. anthracis strain V770-NPI-R (49) or alum-precipitated culture filtrate from the Sterne strain (6). The use of the live attenuated STI-1 occasionally results in general and local adverse responses, observed both after primary application and revaccination, and the frequency of responses increases with the number of vaccinations (58). Furthermore, it was reported that the STI-1 vaccine has a relatively low immunogenicity (reviewed by Stepanov et al. in reference 58). To increase the immunogenicity, a combined vaccine of live STI-1 supplemented with cell-free PA formulation was evaluated and proposed for veterinary use (1). While the cell-free PA-based vaccines appear to be safer, they require numerous boosters (8) and were shown to have reduced ability to protect laboratory animals against certain virulent strains of B. anthracis (39, 60). In addition, these vaccines contain variable amounts of PA, as well as undefined quantities of LF and EF, adsorbed to aluminum hydroxide (4, 21, 49, 59). It appears, therefore, that there is a need for a safe and more efficient vaccine which could generate stable and prolonged immunity in humans (59). These conclusions led to the evaluation of various adjuvants with purified PA (2, 16, 29, 59) and to the creation of two types of live vaccines: vaccines based on nonvirulent B. anthracis (pXO1+) mutated strains (31, 47) and vaccines expressing PA from a cloned pagA gene using heterologous hosts such as the vaccinia virus, Bacillus subtilis, Salmonella typhimurium (10, 27, 28, 30, 31, 64), or a nontoxinogenic strain of B. anthracis (4). These pioneering studies suggest that recombinant B. anthracis live vaccines may have potential as a future anthrax vaccine.

We report here the construction of several recombinant, nonencapsulated, and nontoxinogenic B. anthracis spore-forming strains expressing different levels of PA. We demonstrate that one of these strains, containing the pagA gene under a potent heterologous constitutive promoter, can be safely used to provide efficacious long-lasting immunity in experimental animals following a single immunization dose.

Attenuated Nontoxinogenic and Nonencapsulated Recombinant Bacillus anthracis Spore Vaccines Protect against Anthrax

Comparison of individual and combination DNA vaccines for B. anthracis, Ebola virus, Marburg virus and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus.

Bacillus anthracis, the etiologic agent for anthrax, produces two bipartite, AB-type exotoxins, edema toxin and lethal toxin. The B subunit of both exotoxins is an Mr 83,000 protein termed protective antigen (PA). The human anthrax vaccine currently licensed for use in the United States consists primarily of this protein adsorbed onto aluminum oxyhydroxide. This report describes the production of PA from a recombinant, asporogenic, nontoxigenic, and nonencapsulated host strain of B. anthracis and the subsequent purification and characterization of the protein product. Fermentation in a high-tryptone, high-yeast-extract medium under nonlimiting aeration produced 20 to 30 mg of secreted PA per liter. Secreted protease activity under these fermentation conditions was low and was inhibited more than 95% by the addition of EDTA. A purity of 88 to 93% was achieved for PA by diafiltration and anion-exchange chromatography, while greater than 95% final purity was achieved with an additional hydrophobic interaction chromatography step. The purity of the PA product was characterized by reversed-phase high-pressure liquid chromatography, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-capillary electrophoresis, capillary isoelectric focusing, native gel electrophoresis, and SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The biological activity of the PA, when combined with excess lethal factor in the macrophage cell lysis assay, was comparable to previously reported values.

S. Jendrek

Papers

Fermentation, Purification, and Characterization of Protective Antigen from a Recombinant, Avirulent Strain of Bacillus anthracis