Recombinant glycoconjugates for the diagnosis of human and animal infections

JUAN E. UGALDE

Buenos Aires

Simposio; First Argentinian Symposium of Glycobiology "GlycoAR 2014"; 2014

Infectious diseases are still one of the mayor causes of deathsworldwide, particularly in developing and low-income countries.The fight against these infections has three central pillars:prevention (vaccines), diagnosis and treatment. Whilevaccination is, generally, not dependent on the localinfrastructure and technical capacities, diagnostic techniquescan be extremely variable in terms of performance, technicalskills as well as in the requirements for the equipmentnecessary for its implementation. For these reasons it hasbecome more evident the need for the development of newdiagnostic tools that can be implemented in areas with scarceinfrastructure and low technical capacities. We present here aset of new antigens for the diagnosis of two bacterialinfections, Brucella ssp and Escherichia coli STEC O157,O145 and O121; that can be adapted to other Gram-negativebacteria. These antigens are recombinant glyco-conjugatesthat couple the O-antigen to a carrier protein and are easilyproduced and purified. We tested these antigens in twoplatforms: ELISA and paramagnetic microbeads, and weevaluated their performance to detect infection in humans andbovines in the case of Brucella and in children for E. coli. Weshow that these glyco-conjugates have an excellentperformance in both platforms suggesting that they could bepromising antigens for new diagnostic kits.