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Could vaccines breed super-virulent Malaria in unvaccinated individuals?
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Fhirinne |
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One of the biggest worries for vaccine developers, aside from choosing the right strains to target, is that pathogens will evolve mutations in proteins targeted by the vaccine that will allow them to escape immune surveillance, rendering the vaccine ineffective. But as new research published in PLOS Biology from evolutionary biologist Andrew Read suggests, that’s not all vaccine developers should worry about. Working in a rodent model of malaria, Read’s group shows that vaccines can also drive the evolution of more virulent pathogens.To test the possibility that vaccination might allow more virulent pathogens to evolve, Victoria Barclay, a postdoctoral researcher in Read’s lab, first immunized mice with AMA-1, a component of a malarial protein used in several vaccines now in human clinical trials. Then, in what’s known as “serial passage” experiments, she sequentially transferred rodent malaria parasites (P. chabaudi) from one vaccinated mouse to another, simulating the natural process of disease transmission. She then repeated the process in unvaccinated mice. (Learn more about the experiments in the related synopsis.)
“The parasites get nastier when we evolve them through vaccinated mice,” says Read. “They do more damage in unvaccinated mice after evolving through the vaccinated ones.” [ link to blogs.plos.org] [ link to www.plosbiology.org]
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