RECOMBINANT ATTENUATED SALMONELLA VACCINE (RASV)
Research Area: Vaccine Development
Expedition(s): 27 and 28
Principal Investigator(s): ● Cheryl A. Nickerson, PhD, Arizona State University, Tempe,
Arizona
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
Recombinant attenuated
Salmonella vaccine (RASV)
evaluates the ability of the
spaceflight platform to accelerate
recombinant attenuated
Salmonella vaccine development
against pneumococcal pneumonia,
which causes life-threatening
diseases (pneumonia, meningitis,
bacteremia) that kill over 10
million people annually,
particularly children and elderly
who are less responsive to current
anti-pneumococcal vaccines. The
overall goal of the RASV
experiment is to use spaceflight as an innovative platform to facilitate the design and
development of next generation vaccines with improved efficacy and protective immune
responses while minimizing unwanted side effects by 1) providing novel gene targets for
vaccine improvement and development, and 2) re-formulating existing vaccines. The
experiment is a joint collaboration between Arizona State University researchers, Dr. Cheryl
Nickerson and Dr. Roy Curtiss III.
EARTH BENEFITS
The research results from RASV could lead to the development of new and effective vaccines to
combat pneumonia and related infections on Earth. Further, these vaccines could have fewer
side effects and provide a template for the development of vaccines to combat other infectious
diseases.
SPACE BENEFITS
Our previous spaceflight studies demonstrated a significant increase in virulence and/or
virulence characteristics in bacterial pathogens when cultured during flight, thus increasing the
uncertainty of the infection risk to the crew during a spaceflight mission. Our current
spaceflight experiment provides additional key information that can advance our understanding
of alterations that occur in microbial virulence during spaceflight and may lead to better
countermeasures against infection in future human exploration missions.
This investigation is complete; however additional results are pending publication.
Cheryl Nickerson of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State
University. Image courtesy of Nick Meek.