A New Vaccine Against Meningococcal Serogroup B

Serogroup B Neisseria meningitidis is the most common cause of bacterial meningitis and sepsis in infants in Europe and the cause of up to 60% of cases in the U.S.

Although serogroups A, C, Y, and W-135 N. meningitidis are preventable with available vaccines, development of a serogroup B vaccine has been challenging. A traditional glycoconjugate vaccine is not possible for serogroup B vaccines because the external polysaccharide capsule is poorly immunogenic and antigenically similar to human neural-cell tissue. In recent years, the genome of serogroup B has been sequenced, and using computer simulation (in silico), proteins encoded by serogroup B can be screened to find potential vaccine candidates. This “reverse vaccinology” is how the 4CM…