The Proft lab is currently working on three vaccines that are based on group A streptococcus (GAS) pili which are hair-like extensions from the bacterial cell surface. Two of them (GASPEL and TeeVax) are directed against GAS in an attempt to generate vaccines to prevent acute rheumatic fever. GASPEL is a mucosal vaccine that contains complete GAS pili and was effective in preventing type-specific nasopharyngeal GAS colonisation in a mouse model. TeeVax is a recombinant multi-valent vaccine that contains protein domains of all 18 major T antigens (pilus fibre proteins). This vaccine was effective against GAS challenge in an invasive mouse model. The development of both vaccines is spear-headed by Dr Jacelyn Loh and are currently funded by a project grant from the National Heart Foundation (GASPEL) and from the MWC GAS flagship (TeeVax). The generation of the TeeVax vaccine was funded by HRC. The group has recently received funding from the School of Medicine Foundation to test TeeVax in a non-human primate model. This will be carried out at Emory University in Atlanta, USA, later this year.
PilVax is a peptide delivery platform for the development of peptide vaccines and is currently funded by a Marsden grant. The PilVax project is led by Dr. Catherine Tsai, who received an AMRF postdoctoral research fellowship last year and a recent Kelliher Charitable Trust Emerging Research Start-up Award for this work. Catherine is currently testing peptides from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (in collaboration with Otago University and with support of PhD student Sam Blanchett), gonococcus (in collaboration with Hangzhou University, China) and influenza A virus.
The Proft group is also investigating a novel GAS complement evasion factor (Haniyeh Aghababa, PhD project) and is developing a Streptococcus iniae – zebrafish infection model (Kar Yan Soh, PhD project, in collaboration with Dr Chris Hall.