Lay summary
Streptococcus pyogenes, or group A streptococcus (GAS), is a bacterium that causes a wide range of human diseases, including pharyngitis, toxic shock and acute rheumatic fever. Current treatment with penicillin poses not only a financial burden, but also the risk of the development of antibiotic resistance. A safe and efficacious vaccine against GAS is still unavailable and there is a strong research focus on identifying useful vaccine candidates. We propose to investigate the potential use of the T-antigen as a vaccine candidate. The variable T-antigen is highly immunogenic and a recent sequencing survey suggests that 18 T-antigen variants would be sufficient for the complete coverage of GAS strains in New Zealand. The aim of this project is to generate protein domain fusions consisting of sections from different T-antigens (TeeVax). TeeVax will be tested for bactericidal antibodies and protection against a panel of NZ GAS strains.