Protein Anchor
The need
Recent reports from public
health officials in the United States show that antibiotic resistance is
increasing rapidly among certain bacteria. The increase is resulting
largely from the frequent use of antibiotics and incomplete treatments
that allow resistant bacteria to proliferate. Antibiotic-resistant
bacteria are making it difficult if not impossible to treat certain
infections. Staphylococcus aureus, for instance, is a common germ
that normally lives on your skin, but can gain entry to the body and cause
abscesses, bone infections, pneumonia or infection of the heart valves. In
the 1940s virtually all strains of S. aureus were susceptible to
penicillin. Today, more than 90% of S. aureus strains are resistant to
penicillin and many other antibiotics that were once effective against
these bacteria. All strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococci)
were susceptible to penicillin some decades ago but by the end of the
1990s, 25% of all pneumococci were resistant to penicillin. Pneumococci
are the leading bacterial cause of ear infections, sinus infections,
pneumonia requiring hospitalization, and bacterial meningitis. One
alternative, at least for some types of bacteria, is vaccination.
Vaccination against pneumococci is now routinely recommended for infants
and young children so that children will not get serious pneumococcal
infections such as meningitis or bloodstream infection. Vaccination is
also the most realistic method of fighting viral infections like flu, HIV
and hepatitis. The major road-blocks in the development of anti-bacterial
and anti-viral vaccines are bringing together the correct antigens,
adjuvants and display technology to generate effective immunity.
The solution
Biomade Technology exploits and develops novel protein
domains that are involved in binding to (micro-) organisms. We have
developed a proprietary technology, the Protein Anchor Display (PAD),
which has applications in a variety of medical areas such as the delivery
of oral and nasal vaccines, targeting drugs or antibodies to bacteria, and
preventing infection of biomedical implants. An ongoing development
program is focused on a wide variety of microbes and higher organisms that
possess similar domains in other proteins, so that new forms can be
obtained by combining the traits of these homologs.
By the application of gene-fusion, site-directed mutagenesis and/or
gene-shuffling techniques, multiple new binding domains are being
generated that can carry antibodies or nano- and micro-particles or
liposomes loaded with drugs to cells of specific organs or to tumor
cells.
The Protein Anchor is the cell-wall binding domain
(Anchor) of an enzyme from a Generally Recognized As
Safe (GRAS) bacterium. It has the ability to attach from the outside to a
wide variety of micro-organisms even as part of a
chimeric fusion protein. The resulting carrier micro-organism is
not a genetically modified organism (GMO) but displays the new trait, the
Protein Anchor fusion, on its surface. It also is able to display multiple
different proteins, proteins that cannot be
translocated across membranes and non-proteinaceous compounds that
are linked in vitro to the Protein Anchor prior to attachment.
The status
The
technology is the foundation of Mucosis
B.V., a spin-out from Biomade,
focusing on the development of mucosal vaccines. In Biomade, we continue
to employ the technology together with academic and industrial
partners in search of new antigens for new vaccines.
