Baxiva vaccine to prevent urinary tract infections forever

(CONNECT) Giorgia Greter and the two members of her start-up Baxiva are tackling the issue of urinary tract infections in a completely new way. At the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich(ETH), where she also completed her doctorate, the team is working on a solution to a health problem that regularly affects many people, especially women. The start-up is developing a preventive vaccine against E. coli bacteria, the main cause of painful urinary tract infections. According to an ETH report, Baxiva's approach has so far proved extremely promising. In addition, only one injection should solve the problem once and for all.

E. coli bacteria "have toxins that break open our cells in order to access nutrients, and they have a protective polysaccharide capsule that makes these bacteria almost invisible to the immune system," explains Greter. Her work is aimed at this capsule. "Our vaccine teaches the immune system to recognize and attack the capsule."

To do this, "we have to bond the polysaccharide with an immunostimulating protein and inject this combination into the body". The breakthrough was achieved in collaboration with chemists at ETH. Together they "identified a specific chemical latch of all E. coli polysaccharides, and our colleagues from chemistry designed a 'linker', the perfect glue to bind these polysaccharides to a protein." Among her colleagues, the researcher ultimately also found the co-founders of her start-up, of which she is CEO.

The vaccine has already been successfully tested on mice. This and the literature "strongly suggest that our approach of targeting the glycan capsule is the right one," says Greter. The team is now looking for a laboratory that can produce clinical-quality vaccine batches. This is followed by clinical trials. ce/mm