In a finding that further validates an emerging vaccine strategy, researchers in Italy and the United States have worked backward from genome to antigens to identify a protein cocktail that may confer global protection against group B streptococcus (GBS). The process, reported in this week's
This discovery represents "one of the important ways in which the promise of genomics can be harnessed, in terms of developing rational and high-throughput screens for novel vaccines," said Victor Nizet of the University of California, San Diego, who did not participate in these studies. "This is a global, high-throughput approach that has no preconceptions or biases about the proteins," he said.
GBS is a particularly complex organism with nine different serotypes, Nizet said. The researchers compared the genomes of eight bacterial samples that represent the ...
