Poster: Efforts to enhance immunogenicity of a recombinant malaria vaccine: Fusion to a mouse complement protein
 
Samuel Locoh-Donou and Dr. Carol Berkower

 
The goal of our lab's research is to generate a vaccine against malaria .Our strategy involves generating large amounts of the HEP17 antigen of the malaria parasite by expressing the HEP17 gene in E. coli . This antigen will be injected into mice and tested for its ability to generate an anti-malarial immune response.
 
We will fuse the HEP17 gene to the mouse C3d antigen which has been shown to enhance immunogenicity against other antigens when expressed as a fusion protein. This fusion protein will be tagged by fusing the 6xHis peptide to its N-terminus. The resulting gene fusion will then be inserted into the pET-30a-c (+) vector and expressed in E. coli. The final construct will then be purified and used to vaccinate mice.
 
The vaccinated mice will be tested for the development of an immune response against HEP17 and the ability to survive a challenge infection by the malaria parasite.