Researchers from Imperial College London (ICL) and the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) have launched the immunity to Streptococcus pyogenes (iSpy) Network to combat a deadly group of A streptococcal (Strep A) bacterial infections.
The global multi-institution network, funded by the Leducq Foundation, will explore the bacterial causes of sepsis and heart damage in children.
Strep A bacterial infections, which are estimated to affect around 50 million people worldwide and result in around half a million global deaths every year, can sometimes lead to deadly sepsis or autoimmune damage to the heart, including debilitating rheumatic heart disease (RHD).
The iSpy Network brings together 28 investigators across 11 countries, including experts in immunology, infectious disease, epidemiology, vaccinology and experimental medicine, as well as partners in The Gambia, South Africa, Brazil and Fiji.
The five-year project aims “to gain a better understanding of the body’s immune response to Step A and determine the most effective way to vaccinate” against it, explained ICL’s professor Shiranee Sriskandan, head of the department of infectious disease at iSpy-LIFE, an iSpy sub-network.
iSpy-LIFE will aim to address this through studies in young children, school age pupils and adults to investigate how good immunity to Strep A develops in children after naturally acquiring infections over time.
The iSpy-EXPLORE sub-network will focus on protective immune cell and antibody responses in experimental animals that receive promising Strep A vaccine candidates, which are currently in development, while examining how the human immune system reacts to Strep A infections in healthy volunteers.
The research hopes to offer a better understanding of what provides immunity to Strep A, how to measure good and bad immunity to Strep A and how a vaccine may be developed to emulate and accelerate immunity in children while protecting against strep throat, invasive infections and RHD.
UC San Diego’s professor Victor Nizet, who leads iSpy-EXPLORE, the second iSpy sub-network, commented: “This new information should have a major impact [towards] alleviating the burden of Strep A across the world.”
