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Abstract
Clostridium difficile is responsible for thousands of deaths each year and a vaccine would be welcomed, especially one that would disrupt bacterial maintenance, colonization and persistence in carriers and convalescent patients. Structural explorations at the University of Guelph (ON, Canada) discovered that C. difficile may express three phosphorylated polysaccharides, named PSI, PSII and PSIII; this review captures our recent efforts to create vaccines based on these glycans, especially PSII, the common antigen that has precipitated immediate attention. The authors describe the design and immunogenicity of vaccines composed of raw polysaccharides and conjugates thereof. So far, it has been observed that anti-PSII antibodies can be raised in farm animals, mice and hamster models; humans and horses carry anti-PSII IgA and IgG antibodies from natural exposure to C. difficile, respectively; phosphate is an indispensable immunogenic epitope and vaccine-induced PSII antibodies recognize PSII on C. difficile outer surface.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
H Chow, M Sagermann and J Sundsmo are employees of Stellar Biotechnologies (CA, USA). MA Monteiro was funded by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.
Notes
GalNAc: N-acetyl-galactopyranosamine; Glc: Glucopyranose; Man: Mannopyranose.
GalNAc: N-acetyl-galactopyranosamine; Glc: Glucopyranose; Man: Mannopyranose.
GalNAc: N-acetyl-galactopyranosamine; Glc: Glucopyranose.
GalNAc: N-acetyl-galactopyranosamine; Glc: Glucopyranose; Man: Mannopyranose.