LONDON: Swedish researchers have identified a new pneumococci vaccine candidate that potentially prevent pneumonia, sepsis, and meningitis. According to the study published in the journal PNAS, the vaccine molecules are nano-sized membrane vesicles created by bacteria and provide protection in mice.

The idea of producing a vaccine based on nano-sized membrane vesicles that pneumococcal bacteria naturally release from their cell membrane in order to communicate with their environment and affect other cells was investigated by researchers at Karolinska Institutet.

These vesicles include proteins that aid the bacteria's ability to avoid the immune system of the host. Membrane particles were extracted from cultured pneumococcal bacteria by the researchers. They discovered that immunising mice with these membrane vesicles protected them from severe pneumococcal infections.

Furthermore, the mice exhibited protection against other pneumococcal strains/types as well as the pneumococcal strain/type from which the particles were recovered. MalX and PrsA, two proteins found in membrane particles, are both required for the major protective effect, according to the researchers.

"Our vaccine candidate, membrane particles containing both of these proteins, provides protection regardless of pneumococcal type," said Birgitta Henriques-Normark, a professor at the Karolinska Institutet's Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology.

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