Who Needs a Staph Vaccine

In a new study published in Cell Reports Medicine, researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine explained why people would benefit from a saphylococcus aureus (SA) vaccine.

While SA causes many dangerous health complications, including wound and bloodstream infections, the bacterium is also a normal part of the healthy human microbiome, where it lives peacefully in the nose and on the skin.

These researchers tested a new hypothesis that SA bacteria can trick the body into releasing non-protective antibodies when they first colonize or infect humans.

When the individual is later vaccinated, these non-protective antibodies are preferentially recalled, making the vaccine ineffective.

This study showed that antibody responses against SA cell-wall-associated antigens (CWAs) are non-opsonic, while antibodies against SA toxins are neutralizing.

Significantly, the protective characteristics of the antibody imprints accurately predict the failure of corresponding vaccines against CWAs and support vaccination against toxins.

In passive immunization platforms, natural anti-SA human antibodies reduce the efficacy of the human monoclonal antibodies suvratoxumab and tefibazumab, which is consistent with the results of their respective clinical trials.

Strikingly, in the absence of specific humoral memory responses, active immunizations are efficacious in both naive and SA-experienced mice.

Overall, this study points to a practical and predictive approach to evaluating and developing SA vaccines based on pre-existing humoral imprint characteristics.

“SA has been with humans a long time, so it’s learned how to be part-time symbiont, part-time deadly pathogen,” said senior author George Liu MD, PhD, professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine, in a press release on January 16, 2024. 

“If we’re going to develop effective vaccines against SA, we need to understand and overcome the strategies it uses to maintain this lifestyle.”

This study was funded, in part, by the U.S. National Institute of Health.