Use of bacterial glycoproteins for diagnostics of bacterial infections

JUAN E. UGALDE

Scottsdale

Conferencia; FASEB Microbial glycobiology; 2018

Infectious diseases are still one of the mayor causes of deaths worldwide, particularly in developing and low-income countries. The fight against these infections has three central pillars: prevention (vaccines), diagnosis and treatment. While vaccination is, generally, not dependent on the local infrastructure and technical capacities, diagnostic techniques can be extremely variable in terms of performance, technical skills as well as in the requirements for the equipment necessary for its implementation. For these reasons it has become more evident the need for the development of new diagnostic tools that can be implemented in areas with scarce infrastructure and low technical capacities. We present here a set of new antigens for the diagnosis of two bacterial infections, Brucella ssp and Escherichia coli STEC; that can be adapted to other Gram-negative bacteria. These antigens are recombinant glycoconjugates that couple the O-antigen to a carrier protein and are easily produced and purified. We tested these antigens in three platforms: ELISA, paramagnetic microbeads and lateral flow strips, and we evaluated their performance to detect infection in humans and animals in the case of Brucella and in children for E. coli. We show that these glyco-conjugates have an excellent performance in all platforms suggesting that they are promising and versatile antigens for new diagnostic kits.