Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) have been awarded £550,000 by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to develop an effective vaccine against Campylobacter jejuni in poultry.

Infectious diarrhoea is a global problem, and Campylobacter jejuni is the most common bacterial cause. In low-resource regions, Campylobacter infections are common in young children, causing significant deaths as well as being associated with stunted growth and life-long physical and cognitive deficiencies. A C. jejuni poultry vaccine that can reduce the rising incidence of human campylobacteriosis is urgently needed

The project is led by Associate Professor Dr Ozan Gundogdu at LSHTM, in collaboration with Professor Amirul Islam Mallick from IISER, Kolkata, India, and postdoctoral research fellow Dr Subhadeep Gupta.

Dr Gundogdu’s Enterics Research Team at the LSHTM have shown that a promising approach for developing new cost-effective vaccines is to engineer outer membrane vesicles (OMVs), which play an important role in C. jejuni virulence. OMVs are spherical, membrane-bound structures released by Gram-negative bacteria. Rather than secrete virulence factors into the surrounding area, where they could be degraded by the host, many Gram-negative bacterial pathogens utilise OMVs as a mechanism of delivering active proteins into host cells. The study team hypothesise that OMVs are suitable for C. jejuni vaccination in commercial broiler.

He said: “The project aims to deliver much-needed progress towards an affordable efficacious C. jejuni vaccine, with far-reaching potential for reducing this pathogen in the food production chain and cutting subsequent transmission to humans.

“This collaboration between LSHTM and IISER India underscores the importance of global partnerships in addressing pressing infectious disease challenges and pioneering new solutions for public health.”