Novel mRNA vaccine prevents and treat C. difficile

A new vaccine provides hope for treating and even preventing the highly contagious and difficult-to-treat Clostridioides difficile infection, more commonly known as C. difficile or C. diff. In animal models, this first mRNA-LNP C. difficile vaccine was found to protect against C. difficile first-time infections and relapsing infections by inducing a robust immune response, promote clearance of existing C. diff bacteria from the gut, and even overcome deficits in host immunity to protect animals after infection, according to researchers at the Perelman School of Medicineat the University of Pennsylvaniaand Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The results, published in the journal Science, will pave the way for clinical trials of the vaccine.

C. difficile is a bacterium that can cause infection with symptoms ranging from diarrhea to deadly colon damage. It spreads quickly via its hard-to-kill spores and commonly infects vulnerable populations, including the elderly, children, those taking antibiotics, and often, patients in hospitals or nursing homes. The bug is also persistent: 30-40% of those diagnosed with a C. difficile infection will likely get it again.

"Our approach was to create a multivalent mRNA vaccine that would attack multiple aspects of C. diff's complex lifestyle simultaneously without affecting the normal microbiota," says co-first author Mohamad-Gabriel Alameh, an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Penn and a senior principal scientist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Antibiotics are not always an effective means of successfully treating really tough pathogens like C. diff, and we have only begun to scratch the surface of the full potential of mRNA vaccines for a host of infectious diseases."

"Where most vaccines are spurring one's immune system to create specific antibodies, mRNA vaccines were a perfect candidate for a C. difficile vaccine because they can be easily packaged up to elicit the immune system to do more than one thing to protect against a bacteria, virus, or fungus," says study author and Nobel Laureate Drew Weissman, the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research at Penn whose work laid the foundation for the world's first mRNA vaccines.

Read more at Penn Medicine News.