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Vaccines as a remedy for antimicrobial resistant bacterial infections

Objective

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is perhaps the most emerging alarm in health. It already causes 700,000 deaths per year and the forecast for 2050 is 10 million deaths, more than cancer today. WHO, UN General Assembly, World Bank, G20, EU, UK and USA governments call for new antibiotics, but the pipeline for new antibiotics is not very promising. Here we propose to use new technologies to develop human monoclonal antibodies and vaccines against three AMR bacteria such as gonococcus, pneumococcus and E.coli. The technology defined as reverse vaccinology 2.0 already successful for viral infections, will be used for bacterial vaccines. Taking advantage of the recent possibility of high throughput cloning of human B cells from convalescent or vaccinated people we aim to find targets difficult or impossible to be discovered using conventional technologies. B cells will be cloned from people convalescent from target infections and from people vaccinated with Men B vaccine which confers some protection against gonococcus. The antibodies produced by the clones will be screened for their ability to bind, intoxicate or kill bacteria using a novel high-throughput microscopy platform that rapidly captures digital images and also with conventional, lower throughput technologies such as bactericidal, opsono-phagocytosis and FACS assays. The selected antibodies, will be expressed as full length and used for passive immunization in animal models and tested for protection in vivo. Finally, those antibodies that will provide the best protection in the above assays, will be used to identify the recognized antigens. Selected antigens will be expressed and tested in vaccine formulations. Fab fragments can be used to make co-crystals with the antigen and determine the crystal structure of the new antigens, for the development of structure-based antigen design. In conclusion we expect to enable development of human monoclonal antibodies and vaccines against AMR.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2017-ADG

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Host institution

FONDAZIONE TOSCANA LIFE SCIENCES
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 432 500,00
Address
VIA FIORENTINA 1
53100 Siena
Italy

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Region
Centro (IT) Toscana Siena
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 432 500,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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