Development of vaccines against superbugs: challenges and strategies

Abstract

Superbugs are broadly referred to the bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics, and the special term is "multi-drug resistant bacteria". In 2017, WHO listed 12 antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can cause severe illness or death in humans as the global priority pathogens, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumonia. MRSA ranks the first among Gram-positive bacteria and the others take the top 3 among Gram-negative bacteria. Because most of antibiotics have lost their effectiveness to them, human beings have to face enormous challenges and threats that cannot be tolerated. Vaccine is one of the most effective preventive measures. Scientists from China have developed a unique effective vaccine against MRSA with the most multivalent and antigenic components in the world, which has been entered the phase Ⅱ clinical trial. In the past 2 decades, about 20 vaccines against superbugs were developed in the European and American countries, but none has demonstrated protection in human trials. The development of vaccine against superbugs is still an enormous challenge to scientist. There are some problems that need to be solved in the current studies concerning superbugs, such as their pathogenesis, how the vaccines work rapidly in susceptible populations, animal model for superbugs, basic data in clinical epidemiology and assessment for clinical trials, and other key techniques and standards. We suggest that future researches should be carried out in the following aspects: ① establishment of big data about protective antigen epitopes and high-throughput screening techniques; ② rapid onset mechanism and new technology of superbug vaccine; ③ rule and characteristics of immune responses of superbug vaccine; ④ establishment of a mature and stable animal model of superbug infection; ⑤ establishment of a database of superbug epidemiology and strains base on big data, artificial intelligence and genomics; ⑥ immune protection mechanisms and core indicators of superbug vaccines.

Keywords

• superbugs
• drug resistant bacteria vaccine
• challenge
• strategy