Antisera Against Certain Conserved Surface-Exposed Peptides of Nontypeable XXXX Are Protective.

@entity1 @entity2172 @entity35 @entity327 @entity6932 @entity6728 @entity1030 @entity14996
Nontypeable @entity327 (NTHi) cause significant disease, including @entity2172 in @entity1 , exacerbations of @entity1030 , and invasive disease in susceptible populations. No vaccine is currently available to prevent @entity6932 . The interactions of NTHi and the @entity1 host are primarily mediated by @entity14996 and a complex array of surface-exposed proteins (SEPs) that act as receptors, sensors and secretion systems. We hypothesized that certain SEPs are present in all NTHi strains and that a subset of these may be antibody accessible and represent protective epitopes. Initially we used 15 genomic sequences available in the GenBank database along with an additional 11 genomic sequences generated by ourselves to identify the core set of putative SEPs present in all strains. Using bioinformatics, 56 core SEPs were identified. Molecular modeling generated putative structures of the SEPs from which potential surface exposed regions were defined. Synthetic peptides corresponding to ten of these highly conserved surface-exposed regions were used to raise antisera in rats. These antisera were used to assess passive protection in the @entity1 @entity35 model of invasive @entity6728 . Five of the antisera were protective, thus demonstrating their in vivo antibody accessibility. These five peptide regions represent potential targets for peptide vaccine candidates to protect against @entity6728 .
