Novel pneumocystis antigen discovery using fungal surface proteomics

M Zheng, Y Cai, T Eddens, DM Ricks… - Infection and …, 2014 - Am Soc Microbiol
M Zheng, Y Cai, T Eddens, DM Ricks, JK Kolls
Infection and Immunity, 2014Am Soc Microbiol
Pneumonia due to the fungus Pneumocystis jirovecii is a life-threatening infection that
occurs in immunocompromised patients. The inability to culture the organism as well as the
lack of an annotated genome has hindered antigen discovery that could be useful in
developing novel vaccine-or antibody-based therapies as well as diagnostics for this
infection. Here we report a novel method of surface proteomics analysis of Pneumocystis
murina that reliably detected putative surface proteins that are conserved in Pneumocystis …
Abstract
Pneumonia due to the fungus Pneumocystis jirovecii is a life-threatening infection that occurs in immunocompromised patients. The inability to culture the organism as well as the lack of an annotated genome has hindered antigen discovery that could be useful in developing novel vaccine- or antibody-based therapies as well as diagnostics for this infection. Here we report a novel method of surface proteomics analysis of Pneumocystis murina that reliably detected putative surface proteins that are conserved in Pneumocystis jirovecii. This technique identified novel CD4+ T-cell epitopes as well as a novel B-cell epitope, Meu10, which encodes a glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored protein thought to be involved in ascospore assembly. The described technique should facilitate the discovery of novel target proteins for diagnostics and therapeutics for Pneumocystis infection.
American Society for Microbiology