TCD-led pneumonia breakthrough

RESEARCH JOINTLY led by Trinity College Dublin has opened the way to much more effective vaccinations against pneumonia and meningitis. The international team of scientists identified a trigger that causes a powerful immune response to protect against disease.

Dr Ed Lavelle of Trinity's school of biochemistry and immunology jointly led the research with Dr Aras Kadioglu of the University of Leicester. They and colleagues from the US and Switzerland spent four years studying the common and highly dangerous organism Streptococcus pneumoniae, "a really important pathogen", Dr Lavelle said.

The team publish their findings this morning in the online journal PLoS Pathogens, with Dr Edel McNeela of Trinity College as lead author.

Infection by the organism causes a variety of illnesses including pneumonia, meningitis and septicaemia. Attempts to vaccinate against it are hampered, however, because there are 90 known strains of S pneumoniae.

The current best vaccines only deal with a small fraction of these strains, Dr Lavelle said. These worked well but the other strains tend to emerge to replace those knocked out by the latest vaccine, he said.

The researchers began searching for a biochemical common to all 90 strains of the organism and identified one, a toxin called pneumolysin.

Importantly, they also showed for the first time how the toxin sets off a powerful immune response in the person, one that is directly related to protection against S pneumoniae.

The toxin could now become an important addition to any new vaccines developed against S pneumoniae.

Once included it would produce an immune response that could knock out all 90 strains of the organism.

“The hope is we could use pneumolysin in a vaccine as a way to activate [the immune response],” Dr Lavelle said.

Dr Kadioglu described the work as a “major breakthrough” in understanding S pneumoniae, an organism responsible for more than a million infant deaths each year and an important cause of illness and death in the elderly.

The research received support from Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, the Medical Research Council and the Meningitis Research Foundation.