Experimental Studies On NspA DNA Vaccine Against Neisseria Gonorrhoeae Infection

Neisseria gonorrhoeae is the causative agent of the sexually transmitted disease, gonorrhea. Gonorrheal disease has significant morbidity worldwide. Treatment of gonorrhea is increasingly problematic due to the high frequency of acquisition of resistance to multiple antibiotics and to the observation that gonococcal infection does not elicit protective immunity. Vaccine development requires the identification of gonococcal components that are potential targets for immune intervention, and to which protective immune responses are made. The major outer-membrane(OM) components of the gonococcus (Por,Pil,Opa,Los. et al) are surveyed. Probably because of the extensive antigenic variation, these vaccine candidates failed. Plante recently cloned and sequenced the gene of Neisseria surface Protein A (NspA), and evaluated the level of antigenic conservation of it. Their study showed that this protein was highly conserved and constantly expressed at the surface of intact bacterial cells of all N. gonorrhoeae isolates tested. The fact that the NspA could elicit bactericidal products and protective antibodies emphasized its potential feasibility as a vaccine candidate. This study focused on the development of the NspA DNA vaccine and a laboratory mouse model of gonococcal infection utilizing estrogen.1. Cloning and expression of gonococcal NspA gene in eukaryotesApproximately 525 bp gonococcal NspA gene was amplified by PCR from strain...