Potential Impact of Food Safety Vaccines on Health Care Costs.

Foodborne pathogens continue to cause several outbreaks every year in many parts of the world. Among the bacterial pathogens involved, Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, Campylobacter jejuni, and nontyphoidal Salmonella species cause a significant number of human infections worldwide, resulting in a huge annual economic burden that amounts to millions of dollars in health care costs. Human infections are primarily caused by the consumption of contaminated food.

Analysis of resistance to antimicrobials and presence of virulence/stress response genes in Campylobacter isolates from patients with severe diarrhoea.

Campylobacter infections are a major cause of diarrhoea world-wide and two of the antimicrobials used for their control (erythromycin and ciprofloxacin) have been losing efficacy in recent years. In a sample of 174 genotyped isolates from the stools of patients with severe diarrhoea in Qatar, collected between 2005 and 2012, 63.2% showed resistance to ciprofloxacin, 8.

Advances in vaccination against avian pathogenic Escherichia coli respiratory disease: potentials and limitations.

Avian pathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC) is one of the most economically devastating pathogens affecting the poultry industry. This group of extra-intestinal E. coli causes a variety of clinical conditions including airsacculitis and cellulitis.

Delivery of immunogens to mucosal immune system using an oral inactivated cholera vaccine: a new approach for development of oral vaccines.

Oral vaccines have several attractive features; however, due to several challenges, to date, only a limited number of oral vaccines are licensed. Over the past two decades, several oral vehicle delivery systems have been developed to address these challenges and deliver antigens to the target cells in the mucosal immune system. While the size of vehicle delivery systems, the quantity of components in the vehicle formulation, the dose of administration, and even the type of animals species, are important aspects in development of a suitable oral vaccine, our results showed that entrapment of inactivated Vibrio cholera, a component in the structure of Dukoral vaccine into oral vehicle delivery systems, is able to induce a more rigorous humoral immune response in the systemic compartment.

An immunological comparison between lipidated and non-lipidated multivalent HIV-1 peptides representing Gp120 and Gag hypervariable regions.

Despite the extensive efforts towards development of an effective HIV vaccine, major challenges surrounding vaccine design still exist. We have previously developed a unique multivalent HIV-1 candidate vaccine representing hypervariable Gp120 and Gag regions. This candidate vaccine was able to induce a broad cell-mediated immune response in HLA-A2.

Mucosal HIV vaccines: a holy grail or a dud?

The mucosal immune system appears to be a major target of the HIV infection. Therefore, a strong pre-existing anti-HIV immune response in mucosal compartments might be able to prevent HIV infection. Conflicting views regarding the mechanisms of protection at mucosal sites, inferred by the contradictory results of mucosal vaccines in human clinical trials, attests to our lack of knowledge in understanding the human mucosal immune system.