E-Coli Vaccines

Szu of the health institutes and colleagues have developed a vaccine made up of complex sugar that is on the surface of the bacteria, the very O-type polysaccharide that gives O157 its name.
The sugar is linked to a protein taken from another bacterium to make it more potent in stimulating the immune system. Szu and collaborators have tested the vaccine on adult volunteers and on children 2 to 5 years old.
The volunteers were not exposed to O157- that would be unethical – but they developed antibodies to it. Moreover, when the bacteria were exposed in the laboratory to blood samples from vaccinated people, the microbes were killed.
The vaccine is years from the market. The cattle vaccine developed by Bioniche is based on the work of B. Brett Finlay of the University of British Colombia, who helped discover how O157 bacteria attach themselves to the cattle intestines, where that can then multiply.
The bacteria use a type of microscopic syringe to shoot proteins into the cells lining the intestine, and the cells erect a protein pedestal, to which the bacteria can blind.
The bioniche vaccine consists of proteins involved in the attachment.
The idea is that the cow’s immune system would make antibodies to attack the proteins, thereby blocking the attachment.
The bacteria could still pass through the cow and into manure. But if they could not colonize, their levels should remain low.
Tests at the University of Nebraska found that the vaccine reduced by 70 percent the number of cows shedding O157 into their manure.