Whooping cough vaccines get a booster by targeting 2 powerful antibodies

Whooping cough, or pertussis, was once a leading cause of death for children in the US and worldwide before the introduction of vaccines in the 1940s.

But the disease has made a troubling comeback in recent years as vaccine coverage declined after the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2024, several outbreaks left public health officials and hospitals scrambling to accommodate a sudden influx of patients, primarily infants, who are often too young to be vaccinated and suffer the most severe symptoms.

Now, a team of researchers, including members of UT’s McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering and Department of Molecular Biosciences, has made significant strides in understanding and enhancing pertussis immunity.

One of the things that makes pertussis infections dangerous is pertussis toxin (PT), a chemical weapon produced by the bacteria that weakens a patient’s immune response and causes many of the severe symptoms associated with whooping cough.

The new research, described in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on two powerful antibodies, hu11E6 and hu1B7, which neutralise the PT in different ways.

“There are currently several promising new pertussis vaccines in the research and clinical trial phases,” said Jennifer Maynard, professor of chemical engineering at the Cockrell School of Engineering and corresponding author of the new study. “Our findings could be incorporated into future versions quite easily, improving overall effectiveness and longevity of protection.”

Training the immune system to target the most vulnerable sites on the toxin is expected to create more effective vaccines, and the more effective and longer-lasting a vaccine is, hopefully, the more people will take it, said Maynard.

In addition to helping guide future vaccine designs, the hu1B7 and hu11E6 antibodies themselves hold promise as therapeutic medicines for infected and high-risk infants.

—IANS