A researcher at the Royal Holloway University of London is working on a vaccine that targets a hospital superbug showing increasing antibiotic resistance.
Simon Cutting, from the university’s school of biological sciences, wants to begin testing the first trial of the new vaccine against Clostridium difficile in human patients in early 2013. The bacteria caused at least 2,000 deaths and more than 24,000 infections in the United Kingdom last year.
The oral vaccine is a genetically modified human gut bacteria called Bacillus subtilis. Parts of C. difficile appear on the surface of spores created by the bacteria and may trigger a reaction to produce immunity against future C. difficile infection.
For more details, see the Vaccine News.