Patent Application: US-29743007-A

Abstract:
the present invention relates to a small animal model useful in identifying novel therapies for treating pathogenic diseases . this flexible biotechnology tool is valuable for developing novel chemotherapeutics for a broad range of microbial pathogens .

Description:
those skilled in the art will recognize that the systems and methods disclosed can be practiced without one or more of the specific details , or with other methods , components , materials , etc . in some cases , well - known structures , materials , or operations are not shown or described in detail . furthermore , the described features , structures , or characteristics may be combined in any suitable manner in one or more embodiments . it will also be readily understood that the components of the embodiments as generally described and illustrated in the figures herein could be arranged and designed in a wide variety of different configurations . in one embodiment of the present invention , an in vivo system may be used to screen and develop chemotherapeutics that disrupt pathogenic colonization of epithelial cell surfaces . furthermore , embodiments of the present invention can aid government , academic and biotech researchers in the development of both anti - infectives and drugs that directly target the microbe - host interaction , thereby minimizing the selective pressure that may lead to resistance to traditional antibiotics and other chemotherapeutics . in one embodiment , a c . elegans infection system may be used to screen for potentially therapeutic , chemotherapeutic agents against other pathogenic organisms that can colonize a c . elegans host . for example , one embodiment may be used to test the efficacy of a compound against bacterial , viral , and fungal organisms . more particularly , the c . elegans host may be infected with enteric bacteria , enteric viruses , and / or yeast and fungal species in order to test the effect of a candidate compound on the organism . examples of enteric bacterial pathogens may include salmonella spp ., campylobacter spp ., e . coli , shigella spp ., helicobacter pylori , vibrio spp ., clostridium spp . and others . examples of enteric viral pathogens can include hepatitis a virus ( hav ), norwalk - like virus ( nlv ), enterovirus ( ev ), rotavirus ( rv ), astrovirus ( av ), and others . in another embodiment , the infection system is amenable to developing specifically designed anti - infective compounds , e . g ., chemicals that block and / or disrupt pathogen - host interactions . the c . elegans infection system can also be used to evaluate the in vivo activity of compounds that disrupt pathogen virulence gene regulatory processes , directly targeting the pathogen , or to screen libraries of compounds for their ability to limit pathogenic infections . additionally , drug development and screening can be performed using wild type pathogens , making drug discovery more robust from the very beginning of the process . toxicity problems associated with potential therapeutic chemicals may also be identified , as c . elegans , like humans , is a eukaryotic organism . in yet another embodiment of the invention , manipulations can also be made to the nematode side of the c . elegans infection system because of the genetic tractability of c . elegans , i . e ., ability to genetically manipulate this model organism . even though c . elegans shares many protein homologues with humans , some receptors present on human cells to which bacterial antigens bind may be absent from the cells of the nematode . the desired human receptors can be expressed in nematodes in order to exploit specific microbe - host interactions for screening disrupting chemical agents . because chemicals present in a liquid medium are taken into the nematode gut via pharyngeal pumping , our infection system can also be used for identifying chemical agents that disrupt viral pathogen adsorption to specific human receptor molecules . the in vivo systems described herein include a model for use with the causative agent of traveler &# 39 ; s diarrhea , also a common cause of childhood diarrhea in developing countries , enterotoxigenic e . coli ( etec ). there is a great need to develop effective , inexpensive therapies against etec to protect travelers visiting the developing world against this bacterium and to reduce its morbidity and mortality burden on children . etec bacteria colonizes the nematode gut in statistically higher numbers than a laboratory control strain of e . coli , and the simple c . elegans / etec infection system can be used to screen , and thus develop chemical agents that disrupt etec infection . referring to fig1 , it was determined whether etec bacteria would be found in higher numbers within the nematode gut than the non - pathogenic , k - 12 control strain mg1655 . age - synchronized l4 nematodes were placed on rifampin - containing ngm agar , a medium commonly used by researchers modeling bacterial infection in c . elegans , and cfa , a standard medium used to maximize expression of etec fimbriae , with pregrown lawns of rifampin - resistant bacteria as described previously . after 24 hours of incubation at 26 ° c . nematodes were harvested , washed , treated to kill bacteria external to the gut , pulverized and plated on selective media . with continued reference to fig1 , on ngm agar ( black graph bars ) the etec strains h10407 and h10407p lacking a virulence plasmid were found at a mean of ˜ 1 × 10 4 cfu per nematode and the number of mg1655 cfu per nematode was & lt ; 10 , a difference of at least three orders of magnitude . in contrast , on cfa medium ( gray graph bars ) h10407 and h10407p bacteria were found at a mean of ˜ 3 × 10 4 cfu per nematode , whereas the mean for control strain mg1655 was ˜ 4 × 10 3 cfu per nematode , a difference of approximately one order of magnitude . the difference between the etec strains h10407 and h10407p , and control mg1655 in their ability to colonize the nematode gut was statistically significant on both ngm and cfa media ( ngm : p & lt ; 0 . 001 ; cfa : p = 0 . 006 ). there was no significant difference in cfu per nematode values for wild type ( wt ) h10407 and the virulence plasmid lacking strain h10407p on either ngm or cfa agar . because the h10407 and h10407p strains were able to colonize the nematode gut similarly , it may be concluded that factors in addition to the cfa / i fimbria , the cfar regulator , or the st toxin encoded on the h10407 virulence plasmid contributed to this phenotype . referring to fig2 a - 2l , the ability of etec bacteria to colonize the nematode gut by fluorescence microscopy was observed . consistent with values obtained by standard plate count assays , gfp - labeled wt h10407 bacteria 24 hours post - infection were observed on both ngm and cfa and ( fig2 d and 2j , respectively ). in contrast to etec strain h10407 , there was no colonization of the nematode gut by the control strain mg1655 on either ngm or cfa agar ( fig2 b and 2h ). gfp - labeled etec strain h10407p were propagated on ngm and cfa within the nematode gut and observed by fluorescence microscopy ( fig2 f and 2l ), but not as consistently as for the wt strain h10407 ( fig2 d and 2j ). as shown in fig3 , prior to assessing feasibility of using the c . elegans model to screen for potential chemotherapeutic agents , it was investigated whether etec bacteria persist within the nematode gut . nematodes were infected with rifampin - resistant etec or control bacteria . after 24 hours at 26 ° c . they were washed and placed on non - selective media containing the rifampin - sensitive strain mg1655 . twenty - four and 48 hours after the shift , the standard plate count assay was performed as described herein . at the 24 - hour time point , rifampin - resistant strains h10407 and h10407p were found to be 2 × 10 4 and 5 × 10 3 cfu per nematode , respectively , whereas cfu per nematode for strain mg1655 was & lt ; 10 cfu per nematode . comparison of recoverable etec cpu per nematode versus that of mg1655 was significant ( h10407 : p & lt ; 0 . 001 ; h10407p : p & lt ; 0 . 001 ) ( fig3 ). at the 48 - hour point , all strains tested showed increased numbers within the nematode gut compared to the 24 - hour time point and the values were : 5 × 10 4 , 2 × 10 4 and 2 × 10 3 for strains h10407 , h10407p and mg1655 , respectively . again , the values for strain h10407 and h10407p were significantly different than that of strain mg1655 ( p = 0 . 001 ; p = 0 . 025 , respectively ). as shown by fig3 , etec bacteria persist within the nematode gut at least 48 hours after shift onto ngm agar containing a non - pathogenic , laboratory strain of e . coli . in one embodiment , a c . elegans / etec infection system can be used to screen for chemotherapeutic agents able to disrupt colonization of the nematode gut . in another embodiment , a c . elegans / etec infection system may be used to test a range of compounds including , for purposes of example only , the bacteriocidal antibiotic gentamicin , bacteriostatic antibiotic kanamycin , heparin , which may disrupt bacterial adherence , and mannose , which inhibits type i fimbria - mediated adherence to host cells . age - synchronized l4 nematodes were placed on ngm agar inoculated with either strain h10407 or the control mg1655 . twenty - four hours post - infection , 30 nematodes fed each strain were placed in m9 buffer or m9 buffer supplemented with the desired compounds . after an additional 24 hours of incubation at 26 ° c ., nematodes were harvested , washed to remove exterior bacteria , pulverized and plated on selective lb agar . as shown in fig4 , incubation of etec infected nematodes with gentamicin resulted in a significant ( p = 0 . 004 ) reduction in the number of bacteria recoverable from the nematode gut . the mean numbers of nematodes recoverable after incubation in m9 buffer versus m9 buffer supplemented with gentamicin were 1 × 10 5 and 1 × 10 4 , respectively , approximately one order of magnitude . with continued reference to fig4 , there was no significant difference in the number of recoverable etec bacteria after treatment with any of the other compounds tested . additionally , gentamicin reduced the number of enteropathogenic e . coli ( epec ) strain e2348 / 69 bacteria recoverable from the nematode gut by approximately one order of magnitude compared to those recovered from the untreated epec - infected nematodes ( data not shown ). in contrast , treatment of the control strain mg1655 with gentamicin , kanamycin , heparin and mannose resulted in significant reduction in the number of bacteria recovered from the nematode gut ( p & lt ; 0 . 001 for all compounds tested ). the present invention therefore also includes a c . elegans small animal infection model for studying epec . accordingly , a c . elegans infection system could be used to screen for potentially therapeutic chemical agents against multiple e . coli pathotypes . the bacterial and nematode strains , and plasmids used for this study are listed in table 1 . spontaneous rifampin - resistant mutants of the e . coli strains were isolated to limit contamination and prevent growth of the e . coli feeding strain op50 in colonization assays . c . elegans strain dh26 fer - 15 ( b26 ) ii was obtained , which is sterile at 25 ° c . ( caenorhabditis genetic center ) to ensure a constant number of nematodes during the assays due to their inability to reproduce when incubated at 26 ° c . nematodes were propagated on pre - grown lawns of the e . coli food strain op50 at 15 ° c . prior to synchronization for the assays described below . assays were performed on both nematode growth medium ( ngm ) agar ( 3 g nacl , 2 . 5 g peptone , and 17 g agar to 1 liter in h 2 o ; after autoclaving , add 1 ml 1 m cacl 2 , 1 ml 1m mgso 4 , 1 ml 2 - mg / ml uracil , 1 ml 5 - mg / ml cholesterol in ethanol , and 25 ml 1 m kpo 4 ) and colonization factor agar ( cfa ) ( 10 g peptone , 1 . 5 g yeast extract , 0 . 05 g mgso 4 , 0 . 005 g mncl 2 , and 20 g agar in 1 liter h 2 o ) supplemented with the following antibiotics where appropriate : rifampin at 100 μg / ml and tetracycline at 15 μg / ml . ngm agar was supplemented with uracil because e . coli op50 is a uracil auxotroph . prior to the assays , nematodes were age synchronized by a bleaching procedure . briefly , nematodes / embryos grown on e . coli strain op50 at 15 ° c . were harvested by washing the seeded ngm agar plate with m9 buffer ( 3 g kh 2 po 4 , 6 g na 2 hpo 4 , 5 g nacl , 1 ml 1 m mgso 4 in 1 liter h 2 o ), were placed into a microcentrifuge tube , and then washed three times with 1 ml m9 buffer after spinning for 10 seconds at 12 , 000 rpm . nematodes / embryos were resuspended in 100 μm9 buffer and bleach treated by adding 350 μl 280 mm koh and 50 μl bleach . nematodes / embryos were agitated gently and mixed intermittently for 10 min . after a 10 - second spin at 12 , 000 rpm , the supernatant was discarded , and embryos were washed twice more with 1 ml m9 buffer as described above . after a final spin , the embryos and dead nematodes were resuspended in 50 μl m9 buffer ; the suspension was placed on ngm agar plates with the food strain op50 , without antibiotic selection , and incubated at 26 ° c . after 3 days at 26 ° c ., l4 nematodes were removed from feeding using a platinum wire and placed on rifampin - containing ngm agar plates with pre - grown etec and control strains that were incubated at 37 ° c . overnight . prior to seeding of c . elegans , ngm and cfa agar plates were shifted to 26 ° c ., the temperature where they remained for the duration of the assay . for the standard plate count assay , nematodes were fed on etec and control strains for 24 hours . ten nematodes were then chilled in m9 buffer for 24 hours at 4 ° c . to loosen bacteria adherent to the nematode cuticle , washed three times in m9 buffer , treated with 100 μg / ml gentamicin at 37 ° c . for 1 hour to kill exterior bacteria , again washed three times with m9 buffer , treated with 50 % chloroform saturated m9 buffer for 10 minutes , washed three times in m9 buffer containing 1 % saponin and 1 % triton x - 100 , pulverized for 10 seconds using a sterile plastic pestle and a ryobi hand - held cordless drill , and finally plated on lb agar containing rifampin . for the persistence assay , nematodes were fed on rifampin - resistant etec and control strains for 24 h at 26 ° c ., washed thrice with m9 buffer , then transferred to pre - grown lawns of non - resistant mg1655 for 24 h at 26 ° c . subsequently , nematodes were harvested and treated as described in the standard plate count assay above . standard plate count , and persistence data did not fit a poisson model due to over dispersion , and thus were analyzed by negative binomial regression using stata , version 7 . 0 ( stat corp ., college station , tex .). synchronized l4 nematodes were subjected to infection by etec and mg1655 strains containing the green fluorescent protein ( gfp )- producing plasmid pkh91 on ngm and cfa supplemented with rifampin and tetracycline at 26 ° c . twenty - four hours after infection , nematodes were removed using a platinum wire and placed in 500 μl of m9 buffer . immediately prior to microscopy , 500 μl of a saturated solution of chloroform in m9 buffer was added to the nematodes , and they were incubated at room temperature for 10 minutes to kill and remove any bacteria adherent to the exterior . nematodes were washed six times in 1 ml m9 buffer , chilled , transferred to 1 % agarose pads on glass microscope slides to control the rate of desiccation , and visualized using an olympus bx60 microscope fitted with an optronics microfire digital camera ( optronics , goleta , calif .). age - synchronized nematodes were placed on rifampin - containing ngm agar plates with pre - grown etec or mg1655 strains that were previously incubated at 37 ° c . overnight . 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