Computer-aided vaccine design: Jacobs University participates in EU project

In January an EU project was launched on new strategies of vaccine development based on the structural analysis of protein components of pathogenic bacteria and their matching antibodies. Martin Zacharias, expert in computational molecular biology at the Jacobs University Bremen, will be in charge of a 240,000 Euro sub-project focusing on the bioinformatical identification of suitable target proteins and antigen-antibody complexes. The three-year enterprise with a total funding of 2.3 million Euro includes nine collaborational partners from four EU countries.

[ Jan 29, 2007]  The development of antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria is potentially one of the most serious threats in modern medicine. One approach to minimize the use of antibiotics is to vaccinate against pathogenic strains of bacteria, thus activating the immune system to generate inhibitory antibodies that prevent infection. As not all components of the vaccines, which mainly consist of bacterial proteins, are capable of eliciting antibodies capable of binding to the bacterial cell surface and effectively kill the bacteria, currently large-scale screening processes are necessary to identify the appropriate components.

The aim of the EU project BacAbs (Bactericidal Antibodies) is the development of new molecular techniques to obtain highly specific and highly efficient vaccines. In a multidisciplinary approach structural, molecular and bioinformatical methods will be employed to identify new suitable bacterial protein structures for raising effective antibodies as vaccine components. Neisseria meningitides, a pathogen causing of meningitis and septicaemia against which no effective vaccine yet exists, will be used as model organism to further study the antibody-antigen complexes as well as the principles of immunological recognition of bacterial target proteins.

The objective of the Jacobs University researchers under the lead of Martin Zacharias will be to create computer simulations of cell surface protein structures of N. meningitidis as well as their interactions with the antibody structures based on genetic information. These simulations serve as a first exploration of the mechanisms involved and as a basis for further experimental testing.

Coordinated by Xavier Daura, Director of the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona, nine partners from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain participate in the project, one industrial partner, three small to medium-sized enterprises, as well as five research institutions.