Reduced efficacy of an anti-toxin vaccine from senescence-driven attenuation of toxin virulence
Xin Du, Ching Wen Tseng, Elisabet Bjånes, Hunter Gage, Jaclyn Swan, Chih-Ming Tsai, Irshad A Hajam, Cesia Gonzalez, Brian Lin, Victor Nizet, George Y Liu · 2026
Read Reduced efficacy of an anti-toxin vaccine from senescence-driven attenuation of toxin virulence by Xin Du, Ching Wen Tseng, Elisabet Bjånes, Hunter Gage, Jaclyn Swan, Chih-Ming Tsai, Irshad A Hajam, Cesia Gonzalez, Brian Lin, Victor Nizet, George Y Liu (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13313543.txt.
Description
Xin Du and colleagues investigate, in a 2026 study, why vaccines aimed at bacterial toxins so often disappoint. They use aging mice to expose a hidden flaw. Their test case was a vaccine against Staphylococcus aureus alpha-toxin. The toxin harms hosts by attacking a protein called ADAM10 on immune cells. In aged mice, the toxin proved weaker, because ADAM10 activity and myeloid cell function had faded with age. Draining myeloid cells from young mice with a drug produced the same softening.
Immunization protected young mice strongly against infection but failed in aged ones. The toxin's menace, in other words, depends partly on a vigorous immune system for it to attack. Virulence measured in young animals thus mispredicts both danger and vaccine benefit in older or immunocompromised hosts. The authors argue vaccine developers must test candidates in hosts whose immune status resembles the patients who actually need protection.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Xin Du, Ching Wen Tseng, Elisabet Bjånes, Hunter Gage, Jaclyn Swan, Chih-Ming Tsai, Irshad A Hajam, Cesia Gonzalez, Brian Lin, Victor Nizet, George Y Liu |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 44 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |