Several highly attenuated spore-forming nontoxinogenic and nonencapsulated Bacillus anthracis vaccines differing in levels of expression of recombinant protective antigen (rPA) were constructed. Biochemical analyses (including electrospray mass spectroscopy and N terminus amino acid sequencing) as well as biological and immunological tests demonstrated that the rPA retains the characteristics o...

Bacterial live-vector vaccines aim to deliver foreign antigens to the immune system and induce protective immune responses, and surface-expressed or secreted antigens are generally more immunogenic than cytoplasmic constructs. We hypothesize that an optimum expression system will use an endogenous export system to avoid the need for large amounts of heterologous DNA encoding additional proteins...

1046-5928/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Inc. A doi:10.1016/j.pep.2009.09.016 * Corresponding author. Fax: +1 215 503 6795. E-mail address: [email protected] (M 1 Two authors contributed equally. 2 Abbreviations used: PA, protective antigen; ATR/C capillary morphogenesis protein 2; VWA, the von Wil fragment of human immunoglobulin. Mass vaccination against anthrax with existing vac...

Selection of a Macaque Fab with Framework Regions Like Those in Humans, High Affinity, and Ability To Neutralize the Protective Antigen (PA) of Bacillus anthracis by Binding to the Segment of PA between Residues 686 and 694 Emmanuelle Laffly, Ludivine Danjou, Florence Condemine, Dominique Vidal, Emmanuel Drouet, Marie-Paule Lefranc, Chantal Bottex, and Philippe Thullier* EA 2939 GDR CNRS, Virol...

We describe a novel hybrid anthrax toxin approach that incorporates multiple components into a single vaccine product. The key domains of protective antigen (PA) and lethal factor (LF) that may be critical for inducing protective immunity are combined into one recombinant molecule. Two LF N-terminal domain-PA hybrids, one with wild-type PA and another with furin cleavage-minus PA, were expresse...

The anthrax lethal factor (LF) has a major role in the development of anthrax. LF is delivered by the protective antigen (PA) inside the cell, where it exerts its metalloprotease activity on the N-terminus of MAPK-kinases. PA+LF are cytotoxic to macrophages in culture and kill the Fischer 344 rat when injected intravenously. We describe here the properties of some polyphenols contained in green...

The poly-γ-D-glutamic acid capsule and anthrax toxins are major virulence factors of Bacillus anthracis. Genes responsible for capsule biosynthesis are located on pXO2, whereas genes encoding the toxins, which are composed of edema factors, lethal factors, and protective antigens (PA), are located on pXO1. In this study, we found that the pag null mutation not only eliminated the production of ...

BACKGROUND Anthrax is caused by Bacillus anthracis that produce two exotoxins, lethal toxin and edema toxin. The lethal toxin is composed of the lethal factor (LF) complexed with the cell binding protective antigen (PA83, 83 kDa). Likewise, the edema factor (EF) binds to the PA83 to form the edema toxin. Once PA83 is bound to the host cell surface, a furin-like protease cleaves the full-length,...

The protective antigen (PA) component of the anthrax toxins is an essential virulence factor of Bacillus anthracis and is the major protective immunogen. The kinetics of PA production during growth of B. anthracis, and the roles of anti-PA antibody in host immunity are not clearly defined. Production of PA by the vegetative organisms peaks during the shift from exponential to stationary phase o...