Dr. Denise Chac's work from her time as a T32-funded post-doctoral student has been accepted. Link to come!

Abstract: The degree of protection conferred after receiving an oral cholera vaccine (OCV) varies based on age, prior exposure to Vibrio cholerae, and unknown factors. Recent evidence suggests that the microbiota may mediate some of the unexplained differences in oral vaccine responses. We used metagenomic sequencing of the microbiota at the time of vaccination, and then related microbial features to immune responses after OCV using a reference-independent gene-level analysis. We found that the presence of sphingolipid-producing bacteria was associated with the development of protective immune responses after OCV. We experimentally tested these results by stimulating human macrophages with Bacteroides xylanisolvens metabolites and found that sphingolipid-containing extracts increased innate immune responses to OCV antigens. Our findings demonstrate a new analytic method for translating metagenomic sequencing data into strain-specific results associated with a biological outcome, and in validating this tool, we identified that microbe-derived sphingolipids impact in vitro immune responses to OCV antigens.

Susan and Ana will be attending the ASTMH annual conference this year in Toronto at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Susan will be presenting a poster on her research on the Emerging Pathogens Initiative (EPI) project and Ana will be presenting a poster on our new transwell assays with enteric pathogens. 

Ana spoke on Thursday January 22nd about V. cholerae infection and the microbiota impact on severity of disease, and on how microbe-derived sphingolipids may modulate oral cholera vaccine responses

Full manuscript here

Learn more here about Amelia and her work

Okinawa, Japan Dec 12-14, 2023

Ana and Denise were invited to present!

Ana: Host-microbe interactions between gut microbes and Vibrio cholerae

Denise: Improved human-derived models for measuring immune response to oral cholera vaccine antigens

In collaboration with the laboratories of Dr. Joseph Mougous and Guarav Bhardwaj!

We will be targeting enteric pathogens with designed peptides to block virulence! Check it out here