A vaccine to control the spread of E. coli bacteria from cattle to people is now on the market.
It is designed as a vaccine for food safety instead of one meant to improve animal health, said Lorne Babiuk of the University of Alberta.
This latest vaccine reduces the amount of E. coli 0157:H7 bacteria that cattle pass in their manure. E. coli does not harm cattle but can be deadly when humans come in contact with meat or vegetables carrying even a small amount of bacteria-laden feces.
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Fighting infectious disease is an ongoing challenge but with new formulations and methods of delivering medications, humans may gain the upper hand.
“Formulation is going to be absolutely critical for developing effective vaccines for humans or animals,” Babiuk said at the Agricultural BioTechnology International Conference held in Calgary Sept. 23-26.
The World Health Organization estimates a third of the people who die each year succumbed to infectious disease. Antibiotics are often used to treat specific conditions but resistance problems are developing so boosting the natural immune system with vaccines is a better way.
“Vaccination continues to be one of the most cost effective ways to protect individuals, whether they be humans or animals, from infectious diseases,” he said.
Vaccines may be developed using conventional or genetically engineered techniques, although most still follow the traditional method of using a live or inactivated agent to develop disease immunity.
One new treatment method uses better adjuvants, which are substances added to a vaccine to boost its effectiveness. For example, polyphosphazene is a simple molecule active in a wide range of humans and animals. When a vaccine is fortified with it, the immune response is better.
The polyphosphazene can accept grafts of active components of a disease to create a carrier-molecule for the pharmaceutical.
“If we reformulate a vaccine with polyphosphazene, you can see the dramatic increase in immune responses. You don’t have to develop new vaccines.
“You can make these vaccines a lot better with some of these novel formulations,” Babiuk said.
There has also been some crossover work as scientists find that a vaccine for a troublesome problem in animals could provide protection for similar human conditions.
For example, work on the papillomavirus, a herpes virus that causes warts in dogs and cattle, has extended to a similar virus in humans linked to cervical cancer.
Early animal vaccines used processed warts. Now, a specific protein can be extracted from the virus and it is reproduced. Through a biochemical process, the protein reassembles and looks like the virus. It can be used as the vaccine because the immune system sees it as a virus and fights it.
