Project description
A closer look at skin immune responses to parasites
No one likes parasites! These organisms are unwanted guests that need another organism (a host) to survive. They also cause harmful effects on the host. Not all parasitic diseases are easily treated. Some cause considerable morbidity and mortality in poverty-stricken areas, affecting hundreds of millions of lives globally. Vaccination with attenuated parasites is one way to induce immunity to parasites. The EU funded SPARCL project will create a highly immunogenic, adjuvanted whole parasite vaccine. To assess its potency, it will measure early skin-based humoral and cellular immune markers. It will also review the functionality of antibodies by adapting molecular imaging tools. As a high-risk high-gain proposal, it will pave the way for a novel solution.
Objective
Parasitic diseases cause considerable morbidity and mortality in poverty-stricken areas, affecting hundreds of millions of lives globally. Vaccines are urgently needed to alleviate disease and lift the economic consequences. Plasmodium falciparum malaria, Schistosoma mansoni and Necator americanus hookworms are together responsible for the greatest burden of disease. Vaccination with attenuated parasites is an efficacious strategy in inducing immunity to parasites in animal models. Recently, we have translated attenuated parasite vaccination to humans in proof-of-concept clinical trials in which we protected subsets of individuals from challenge. This unique preliminary data indicates a role for the skin as a prime immunological organ. Based on these findings, I propose to create a next generation highly immunogenic, adjuvanted whole parasite vaccines, ready for pre-clinical testing. We will build on our previous experience with chemical tools to load whole parasites with adjuvants. To measure the potency of the new vaccines, we aim to measure early skin-based humoral and cellular immune markers which correlate with protection in our samples from prior and novel controlled human infection models. We will assess the functionality of antibodies by adapting our current molecular imaging tools to quantitatively analyze movement kinematics of parasites in representative 3D environments resembling the human skin. Cellular correlates of protection in skin will be mapped using imaging mass cytometry on freshly obtained skin biopsies from experimentally infected volunteers. Through combined, parallel analysis of circulating immune markers by high-dimensional flow cytometry, we aim to take a comprehensive approach including local and circulating markers to identify protective immune responses. This high-risk high-gain proposal is aimed to break the impasse in the field of parasite vaccine development and open a novel out-of-the-box avenue to fill the vaccine pipeline.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences health sciences infectious diseases malaria
- social sciences sociology demography mortality
- medical and health sciences basic medicine pharmacology and pharmacy pharmaceutical drugs vaccines
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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(opens in new window) ERC-2022-STG
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2333 ZA Leiden
Netherlands
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