Immunization with a tri-antigen syphilis vaccine significantly attenuates chancre development, reduces bacterial load, and inhibits dissemination of Treponema pallidum.

Syphilis continues to be a significant public health concern worldwide. The disease is endemic in many low- and middle-income countries, and rates have risen sharply in high-income countries over the last decade. The continued prevalence of infectious and congenital syphilis worldwide highlights the need for the development of an effective syphilis vaccine to complement public health measures for syphilis control.

High-throughput nanopore sequencing of tandem repeat genes and reveals clade-specific patterns and recapitulates global whole genome phylogeny.

Sequencing of most genomes excludes repeat regions in and the gene, encoding the acidic repeat protein (). As a first step to understanding the evolution and function of these genes and the proteins they encode, we developed a protocol to nanopore sequence and genes from 212 clinical samples collected from ten countries on six continents. Both and repeat structures recapitulate the whole genome phylogeny, with subclade-specific patterns emerging.

B-Cell Epitope Mapping of TprC and TprD Variants of Subspecies Informs Vaccine Development for Human Treponematoses.

Several recent studies have focused on the identification, functional analysis, and structural characterization of outer membrane proteins (OMPs) of (). The species encompasses the highly related , , and subspecies of this pathogen, known to be the causative agents of syphilis, yaws, and bejel, respectively. These studies highlighted the importance of identifying surface-exposed OMP regions and the identification of B-cell epitopes that could be protective and used in vaccine development efforts.