Browsing by Author "Chetty, Shivan"

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    The development of novel HIV-1 vaccines using modified recombinant BCG
    (2016) Chetty, Shivan; Williamson, Anna-Lise; Chapman, Rosamund
    Vaccination continues to represent the most effective means of providing immunological protection against infectious disease in human populations. With the World Health Organisation (WHO) reporting over 1.2 million AIDS related deaths in 2014, an efficacious HIV1 vaccine is urgently needed. The UCT Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Vaccine Development Group has focussed on understanding novel HIV-1 vaccine vectors, such as modified BCG, combined with modified vaccinia Ankara in the context of heterologous prime boost regimes. The tuberculosis vaccine Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) has a wellestablished safety profile as well as notable adjuvant activity with an estimated 3 billion doses administered globally since 1921. The development of modern molecular biology techniques in recent times has led to the creation of modified strains of BCG which have been shown in many cases to be safer and/or more immunogenic than the wild type strains in terms of delivering heterologous antigen. This study focuses on exploiting and combining two particular strategies of rBCG modification. The first is the development of auxotrophic strains that contain deletions geared towards preventing the bacteria from synthesising essential growth compounds or amino acids. An example of this is the ΔpanCD auxotroph of rBCG which does not synthesise pantothenic acid and thus has limited intracellular replication leading to less pathology. The UCT group has previously reported that HIV vaccines vectored by the Pasteur strain of rBCG ΔpanCD induced less pathology but improved immunogenicity as compared to Pasteur WT in the murine model (when used a prime in conjunction with an MVA boost). A second notable BCG modification strategy is the inclusion of exogenous genes to improve the immunogenicity of rBCG as a vaccine vector. An example of this is the insertion of the detoxified Clostridium perfringens toxin, perfringolysin O (pfo), into the rBCG genome. Upon expression, pfo forms pores in the endosome which facilitates translocation of vaccine derived antigen into the cytoplasm. This modification has been shown to lead to cross priming of T cells and improve the induction of vaccine specific CD8+ T cell as compared to controls.
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    HIV-1 subtype C mosaic Gag expressed by BCG and MVA elicits persistent effector t cell responses in a prime-boost regimen in mice
    (Public Library of Science, 2016) Jongwe, Tsungai Ivai; Chapman, Ros; Douglass, Nicola; Chetty, Shivan; Chege, Gerald; Williamson, Anna-Lise
    Over 90% of HIV/AIDS positive individuals in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with highly heterogeneous HIV-1 subtype C (HIV-1C) viruses. One of the best ways to reduce the burden of this disease is the development of an affordable and effective prophylactic vaccine. Mosaic immunogens are computationally designed to overcome the hurdle of HIV diversity by maximizing the expression of potential T cell epitopes. Mycobacterium bovis BCG Δ panCD auxotroph and modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) vaccines expressing HIV-1C mosaic Gag (Gag M ) were tested in a prime-boost regimen to demonstrate immunogenicity in a mouse study. The BCG-Gag M vaccine was stable and persisted 11.5 weeks post vaccination in BALB/c mice. Priming with BCG-Gag M and boosting with MVA-Gag M elicited higher Gag-specific IFN-γ ELISPOT responses than the BCG-Gag M only and MVA-Gag M only homologous vaccination regimens. The heterologous vaccination also generated a more balanced and persistent CD4 + and CD8 + T cell Gag-specific IFN-γ ELISPOT response with a predominant effector memory phenotype. A Th1 bias was induced by the vaccines as determined by the predominant secretion of IFN-γ, TNF-α, and IL-2. This study shows that a low dose of MVA (10 4 pfu) can effectively boost a BCG prime expressing the same mosaic immunogen, generating strong, cellular immune responses against Gag in mice. Our data warrants further evaluation in non-human primates. A low dose vaccine would be an advantage in the resource limited countries of sub-Saharan Africa and India (where the predominating virus is HIV-1 subtype C).