Delivery of a Chlamydial Adhesin N-PmpC Subunit Vaccine to the Ocular Mucosa Using Particulate Carriers.

Trachoma, caused by the intracellular bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis (Ct), remains the world's leading preventable infectious cause of blindness. Recent attempts to develop effective vaccines rely on modified chlamydial antigen delivery platforms. As the mechanisms engaged in the pathology of the disease are not fully understood, designing a subunit vaccine specific to chlamydial antigens could improve safety for human use.

Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 bacterial ghosts retain crucial surface properties and express chlamydial antigen: an imaging study of a delivery system for the ocular surface.

To target chronic inflammatory ocular surface diseases, a drug delivery platform is needed that is safe, possesses immunomodulatory properties, and can be used either for drug delivery, or as a foreign antigen carrier. A new therapeutic approach that we have previously proposed uses nonliving bacterial ghosts (BGs) as a carrier-delivery system which can be engineered to carry foreign antigens and/or be loaded with therapeutic drugs. The parent strain chosen for development of our BG delivery system is the probiotic Escherichia coli strain Nissle 1917 (EcN), whose intrinsic properties trigger the innate immune system with the flagella and fimbriae used to attach and stimulate epithelial cells.

In vitro and in vivo uptake study of Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 bacterial ghosts: cell-based delivery system to target ocular surface diseases.

Purpose: For the successful topical administration of drugs or vaccines to treat ocular surface diseases, efficient and well-tolerated delivery systems/carriers for conjunctival delivery are crucial in the development of new treatment strategies. The present study investigated the efficiency of internalization of bacterial ghosts (BGs) produced from probiotic Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) by human conjunctival epithelial (HCjE) cell line, the EcN BGs cytotoxicity for HCjE cells, and in vivo uptake of EcN BGs by conjunctival guinea pig epithelial cells.

Methods: The uptake of EcN BGs by HCjE cells was analyzed by laser scanning microscopy and flow cytometry.

Comparison of ophthalmic sponges and extraction buffers for quantifying cytokine profiles in tears using Luminex technology.

Purpose: Evaluating cytokine profiles in tears could shed light on the pathogenesis of various ocular surface diseases. When collecting tears with the methods currently available, it is often not possible to avoid the tear reflex, which may give a different cytokine profile compared to basal tears. More importantly, tear collection with glass capillaries, the most widely used method for taking samples and the best method for avoiding tear reflex, is impractical for remote area field studies because it is tedious and time-consuming for health workers, who cannot collect tears from a large number of patients with this method in one day.