The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Bacteria as vaccine carriers?

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Friday, Feb 08, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Bacteria as vaccine carriers?

Y. Mallikarjun

Nobel laureate Barry J. Marshall says any vaccine can be carried into the human body on top of Helicobacter

Barry Marshall

HYDERABAD: In what could be a major breakthrough in the war against diseases, the day may not be far off when humans get vaccinated against cholera, HIV, malaria, influenza and other ailments with bacteria acting as the carrier of the vaccines.

This is exactly what is being looked into in the experiments in mice carried out by an Australian company with which Nobel laureate Barry J. Marshall is closely involved. “I have a research company called Ondek. What we are doing is cloning vaccine molecules into Helicobacter”. While tests were being conducted for cholera vaccine, he explained that any vaccine, be it for protection against chicken flu, HIV, malaria could be carried into the human body on top of Helicobacter.

“The bacteria would live in your stomach for a few months and because they carry these other particles, you become vaccinated against these other dreaded diseases”, Prof. Marshal told The Hindu here on Thursday. He was the co-recipient for Nobel prize in medicine in 2005 along with J. Robin Warren for the discovery of bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer.

“ We have a molecular biologist cloning these vaccines into Helicobacter which is now expressing them. And the beauty of that is if you could make a vaccine like that, you could make millions of doses in a bacterial culture system”, he said. Likening it to “home brewing”, he said the bacteria could be quickly multiplied to make millions of doses.

It would be very useful to protect the community against an epidemic. Research was also on to control Helicobacter’s ability to cause ulcers and cancers.

Passion

Asked if his curiosity and passion to “try something out of the box” led to the discovery that Helicobacter pylori bacteria cause most of the stomach ulcers, he said “ Yes, that’s true because I never thought I should be locked into the previous dogma.”

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