Grant: Cat Grant: STBBI Research in Canada: Beyond HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C - Gonorrhea

Gonorrhea is the second most reported bacterial sexually transmitted infection in Canada, occurring in 84.2 in every 100,000 people. In women, the infection can become severe and can result in pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility while complications in men include scrotal swelling, urethral narrowing, and infertility. Although testing and treatment are available, the increasing resistance to antibiotics globally, including the possible emergence of untreatable gonorrhea in Canada, motivates the development of a vaccine against gonorrhea. Currently, there is no licensed vaccine for gonorrhea. Outer membrane vesicle vaccines against meningococcal disease have been found to be cross-protective against gonorrhea but have only offered a partial protection. Therefore, new vaccines are urgently needed for gonorrhea. Vaccines based on messenger RNA (mRNA)-lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) have been shown to provide effective and safe protection against COVID-19, and many hundreds of millions of doses of mRNA vaccines have been administered worldwide. We propose to use mRNA-LNP technology to design a gonorrhea vaccine and test the ability of the candidate vaccine to induce mucosal immunity in the genital tract. We hypothesize that using stable mRNA vaccines that can navigate through the mucosal barriers, we can induce robust vaginal immunity against gonorrhea. The results of this research will inform the design of mRNA vaccine candidates and generate knowledge on inducing mucosal immunity by mRNA gonorrhea vaccines. Furthermore, the knowledge regarding the mechanisms of inducing T cell immunity in the female gential tract by mRNA vaccines generated from these studies may be useful for development of vaccines against other STIs or infectious diseases.