Identification and characterization of gonococcal iron transport systems as potential vaccine antigens

Gonorrhea is the second most commonly reported infectious disease in the USA, and incidence has been increasing in recent years. Antibiotic resistance among clinical isolates has reached a critical point at which the CDC currently recommends only a single class of antibiotic for treatment. These developments have hastened the search for a vaccine to protect against gonococcal infections. Vaccine efforts have been thwarted by the ability of the gonococcus to antigenically vary most surface structures. The transferrin-iron transport system is not subject to high-frequency phase or antigenic variation and is expressed by all pathogenic Neisseria. Vaccine formulations comprised of epitopes of the transferrin-binding proteins complexed with inactivated cholera toxin generated antibodies with potentially protective characteristics. These antigens, and others predicted from genome sequence data, could be developed into a vaccine that protects against neisserial infections.