Monoclonal Antibodies to Shigella Lipopolysaccharide Are Useful for Vaccine Production

There is a significant need for an effective multivalent Shigella vaccine that targets the most prevalent serotypes. Most Shigella vaccines under development utilize serotype-specific lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) as a major component based on protection and epidemiological data. As vaccine formulations advance from monovalent to multivalent, assays and reagents need to be developed to accurately and reproducibly quantitate the amount of LPSs from multiple serotypes in the final product. To facilitate this effort, we produced 36 hybridomas that secrete monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) against the O antigen on the LPS from Shigella flexneri 2a, Shigella flexneri 3a, and Shigella sonnei We used six of these monoclonal antibodies for an inhibition enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (iELISA), measuring LPSs with high sensitivity and specificity. It was also demonstrated that the Shigella serotype-specific MAbs were useful for bacterial surface staining detected by flow cytometry. These MAbs are also useful for standardizing the serum bactericidal assay (SBA) for Shigella Functional assays, such as the in vitro bactericidal assay, are necessary for vaccine evaluation and may serve as immunological correlates of immunity. An S. flexneri 2a-specific monoclonal antibody killed S. flexneri 2b isolates, suggesting that S. flexneri 2a LPS may induce cross-protection against S. flexneri 2b. Overall, the Shigella LPS-specific MAbs described have potential utility to the vaccine development community for assessing multivalent vaccine composition and as a reliable control for multiple immunoassays used to assess vaccine potency.