mRNA vaccine prevents <i>C. difficile</i> in mice

The bacterium Clostridioides difficile causes about 500,000 infections in the US each year , according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These infections inflame the colon, cause diarrhea, and can be deadly. Scientists have been working on vaccine candidates for C. difficile , but none have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Now researchers report they can protect mice from C. difficile infections with a messenger RNA–lipid nanoparticle (mRNA-LNP) vaccine candidate ( Science 2024, DOI: 10.1126/science.adn4955 ). Researchers led by Mohamad-Gabriel Alameh , Drew Weissman , and Joseph P. Zackular at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine developed the system. The other vaccine candidates for the bacterial infection create antigens against only C. difficile protein toxins, but using the mRNA-LNP platform allows the researchers to target C. difficile ’s entire life cycle by creating antigens to cellular and spore targets in addition