Thesis subject
Plant-based production of vaccines against parasitic worms
Parasitic worms (helminths) infect over 1.5 billion people and continuously threaten livestock worldwide. Chronic helminth infections, in both humans and animals, may cause serious health problems ranging from malnutrition, anemia, diarrhoea, liver damage to blindness. Control of parasitic helminths currently relies on periodic mass administration of anthelmintic drugs. Drug treatment only suppresses infection levels and people/animals are easily re-infected. Furthermore, resistance against anthelmintic drugs is rapidly emerging and spreading in parasites of livestock. This urges the need for alternative control measures.
The most effective and durable way to prevent helminth infections is vaccination. Vaccination with antigens isolated from live parasitic worms has proven to be successful but is unsustainable for large-scale application as it relies on infected host animals as a source of vaccines. For this reason, we develop a plant-based expression platform to produce recombinant anti-helminthic vaccines, with special emphasis on mimicking the natural sugar decoration of these vaccines.
In this promising and multi-disciplinary research field, where plant biotechnology, parasitology and glycobiology meet, you will embark on the production and purification of novel vaccine candidates and assess their glycan composition by mass spectrometry. Ultimately, your thesis work will contribute to the development of novel recombinant vaccines against helminths.