BITS Hyderabad researchers develop experimental pneumonia vaccine

Researchers at the BITS Pilani-Hyderabad campus claim to have developed and tested a new experimental vaccine against Streptococcus pneumoniae, the bacterium responsible for some of the world’s deadliest infections, raising hopes for more effective protection against pneumonia and related diseases.

Streptococcus pneumoniae is the leading bacterial cause of pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis, and was responsible for nearly 740,000 child deaths worldwide in 2019 alone. While existing vaccines, such as the polysaccharide-based ‘PPV23’ and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs), target the bacterium’s capsule and have played a crucial role in disease control, their coverage remains limited.

With more than 100 known strains or serotypes, current vaccines protect against only select variants, allowing non-vaccine serotypes to emerge and spread, said researchers. BITS Pilani-Hyderabad team, led by Kirtimaan Syal, adopted a novel approach that does not rely on the whole bacterium or its capsule.

Using advanced computational tools, researchers designed a synthetic ‘multiepitope’ vaccine from scratch, capable of targeting multiple strains while being safer and more precise. “In our previous study, we used immunoinformatics tools based on bioinformatics and artificial intelligence to identify the most immunogenic fragments of bacterial proteins recognised by the human immune system,” said PhD scholar Yogeshwar Devarakonda, in Mr. Syal’s laboratory.

Selected epitopes or antigens recognised by the immune system from outer cell wall proteins such as ‘Ply, PspA and PsaA’ were stitched together in silico (computer simulation)to create a virtual vaccine candidate. The new study translated this digital blueprint into biological reality, he said.