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Vaccines Against Pneumonia, Meningitis Possible After New Breakthroughs
The discovery will lead to a dramatic shift in our understanding of how the body's immune system responds to infection caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae and pave the way for more effective vaccines.
The collaborative research was jointly led by Dr Ed Lavelle from Trinity College Dublin and Dr Aras Kadioglu from the University of Leicester, with Dr Edel McNeela of TCD as its lead author.
The research was carried out by the teams from Dublin and Leicester with other collaborators from Trinity College Dublin, the U.S and Switzerland over four years and supported by Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Meningitis Research Foundation.
The two teams say they have shown for the first time that the bacterial toxin pneumolysin triggers an immune response by activating a recently discovered group of proteins, called the NLRP3 inflammasome. Once activated, the inflammasome provides protection against infection caused by this pathogen.
The Leicester and Dublin research groups demonstrated that this mechanism operates independently of other previously described immune response proteins - contrary to a dogma in the field.
Importantly, this paper is the first to demonstrate that the NLRP3 inflammasome is essential in the immune response against infection by the pathogen and that the bacterial toxin pneumolysin is the key driver of this process. The researchers state that this new knowledge of how the toxin interacts with the immune system will mean that new vaccines can be developed and targeted more effectively.
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