Synthesis and immunological study of a wall teichoic acid-based vaccine against E. faecium U0317

ABSTRACT

A repeat unit of cell wall teichoic acids (WTA) isolated from E. faecium U0317 was chemically synthesized efficiently by a stepwise strategy. It was derivatized with a 5-aminopentanyl linker to facilitate conjugation with carrier proteins KLH and HSA. Immunological studies of the KLH conjugate 1 demonstrated that it could provoke robust immune responses and high titers of IgG antibodies, which could successfully recognize the synthesized WTA repeat unit 3. This result suggested that synthetic glycoconjugate 1 could be a promising vaccine candidate against E. faecium for further studies.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• E. feacium
• wall teichoic acid
• vaccine
• glycoconjugate

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21472070 and No. 21602084), the Project for Jiangsu Scientific and Technological Innovation Team, Fund for Jiangsu Distinguished Professorship Program, Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. JUSRP11729) and the fund from the Open Foundation of Key Laboratory of Carbohydrate Chemistry & Biotechnology Ministry of Education (No. KLCCB-KF201608).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zhifang Zhou

Zhifang Zhou received her Ph.D. in 2014 from Wayne State University under the guidance of Professor Zhongwu Guo, working on the development of novel cancer immunotherapies based on cancer cell glycoengineering and the development of synthetic carbohydrate-based vaccines against cancer, bacteria and fungi using monophosphrylated lipid A as a build-in adjuvant. After a post-doctoral position in Professor Zhongwu Guo's laboratory, she returned to China where she is currently an Associate Professor at the Key Laboratory of Carbohydrate Chemistry and Biotechnology, Ministry of Education (KLCCB, MOE), School of Biotechnology, Jiangnan University. Dr. Zhou's research interests focus on carbohydrate-based vaccines and novel glycoengineering strategies for bioimaging and immunotherapies.

Zhimeng Wu

Zhimeng Wu received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Zhejiang University. He then undertook postdoctoral training with Professor Jiri Zemlicka at Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, working on antiviral nucleoside chemistry. In 2008, he joined Professor Zhongwu Guo's lab at Wayne State University as a postdoc, where he worked on developing new chemoenzymatic methods for the synthesis of complex GPI-anchored peptides and proteins. In 2011, he moved to New Zealand and worked at the carbohydrate chemistry group of Industrial Research Ltd (now Ferrier Research Institute of Victoria University at Wellington) as a research scientist. He joined the faculty of Jiangnan University at Wuxi, China, as professor at the end of 2013. Dr. Wu's research interests focus on the synthesis of carbohydrates, glycoconjugates, and their biological studies.