Institute: University of Oxford, Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG)
Immune responses to typhoidal Salmonella antigens
Enteric fever caused by Salmonella enterica serovars, Typhi (typhoid fever) and Paratyphi A (paratyphoid fever), is a serious public health concern in many Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC). Globally, typhoid fever is estimated to affect 11-18 million individuals annually, with most infections located in Africa and South Asia. In addition, paratyphoid fever, which has a similar clinical presentation to that of S. Typhi, causes an estimated 3.4-5.4 million infections per year.
While most infections can be treated with antibiotics, the emergence of multi-drug resistant strains has been reported throughout LMIC. This highlights the importance of developing effective vaccines to reduce disease burden and a reliable rapid diagnostic testing to reduce overdiagnosis and over-use of antibiotics and to improve the disease burden estimates in endemic areas. To accelerate vaccine testing in human-restricted pathogens, a controlled human infection model (CHIM) for both S. Typhi and S. Paratyphi has been developed by the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG), which provides a unique opportunity to study vaccine immunogenicity mechanisms as well as disease pathogenesis and diagnostic tests.
In this project, we will characterise immune responses to the recombinant typhoidal Salmonella antigens upon vaccination or pathogen exposure and correlate the responses with the outcomes of CHIM studies to identify the specific responses associated with protection. The findings from this work will provide relevant and valuable data which will be used to assess new vaccines, inform potential vaccine candidates, and develop a serodiagnostic assay for enteric fever.
More about Dr Kim here.