New York, Nov 3: A team of researchers, led by an Indian-origin scientist, has harnessed the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to pinpoint essential components of a vaccine for antibiotic-resistant gonorrhoea, a sexually transmitted bacterial infection affecting over 80 million people globally each year.
Gonorrhoea, known for its resistance to nearly all known antibiotics, presents a considerable challenge in treatment. Left untreated, it can lead to severe and potentially fatal complications, while also increasing the risk of HIV transmission.
In a study published in the mBio journal, the researchers identified two promising antigens as potential vaccine candidates for gonorrhoea, leveraging an AI model called Efficacy Discriminative Educated Network, or EDEN, to detect protective proteins.
EDEN was employed to generate scores that accurately predicted how effective antigen combinations would be in reducing the population of Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacteria responsible for the infection.
According to infectious disease researcher Sanjay Ram from the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, “To the best of our knowledge, this correlation has not been shown before.”
The team utilized the AI model on the proteomes of ten clinically relevant strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae, aiming to predict a set of bacterial proteins capable of training the immune system to recognize and counter the bacteria.
The researchers then tested and confirmed the efficacy of these vaccine candidates in mouse models. They initially examined combinations of two or three antigens in mice and found two proteins involved in cell division to be promising candidates. Notably, these proteins were not previously known to be exposed on the cell surface.
In laboratory tests, blood samples from immunized mice effectively killed bacteria from multiple strains of gonorrhoea. This outcome was in alignment with the predictions made by EDEN.
The team is now exploring ways to advance from preclinical research and determine the protective effects of these proteins within the human body. They have recently joined forces with a South African biotechnology firm to develop an experimental mRNA vaccine based on these antigens.
