T-Cell Expression Cloning Used to Create Novel Vaccine.(Brief Article)

2001 FEB 14 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

- by Michelle Marble, staff medical writer -- According to a study from the United States, advances in technology are facilitating the development of novel and effective vaccines against Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

"Infection of C57BL/6 mice with Mycobacterium tuberculosis results in the development of a progressive disease during the first two weeks after challenge," stated Y.A.W. Skeiky and colleagues, Infectious Diseases Research Institute, Seattle, Washington. "Thereafter, the disease is controlled by the emergence of protective T cells. We have used this infection model in conjunction with direct T-cell expression cloning to identify antigens (Ags) involved with the early control of the disease."

Skeiky et al. published the results of their study in the Journal of Immunology ("T-cell expression cloning of a Mycobacterium tuberculosis gene encoding a protective antigen associated with the early control infection," J Immunol, 2000;165(12):7140-7149).

The researchers created a protective M. tuberculosis-specific CD4 T-cell line. This line was derived from mice at three weeks post-challenge with M. tuberculosis. The cell line was then used to directly screen a tuberculosis genomic expression library.

"This screen resulted in the identification of a genomic clone comprising two putative adjacent genes with predicted open reading frames of 10 and 41 kDa, MTB10 and MTB41, respectively (the products of Rv0916c and Rv0915c, respectively, in the TubercuList H37Rv database)," wrote the authors. "MTB10 and MTB41 belong ...