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Oakville resident helps develop `promising' chlamydia vaccine by Julia Le Oakville Beaver Staff 5 | Friday, July 29, 2016 | OAKVILLE BEAVER | www.insideHALTON.com Oakville resident Dr. James Mahony is among researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton who are on the verge of developing a vaccine for chlamydia. The sexually-transmitted disease (STD) impacts 113 million people around the world each year and can cause women to become infertile if left untreated. In Halton, chlamydia was the most-frequently reported infectious disease last year, with 916 cases reported compared to the 2010-2014 average of 799 cases. The trend is consistent with the general rise of chlamydia rates seen in Ontario over the past 10 years, however incidences of the STD in Halton continue to be significantly below the provincial rate, according to a Halton Region Health Department report. Mahony, who has lived in Glen Abbey for more than 30 years, says the work he has done with his two PHD students David Bulir and Steven Liang at the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University over the last two years shows a lot of promise. As part of the study, mice were purposely infected with chlamydia and were injected with two doses of a vaccine prototype. Results, which were recently published in the journal Vaccine, show the mice were more likely to fight off the infection and the spread of it to the fallopian tubes. "So low and behold, our vaccine decreased the amount of bacterial replication by 95 per cent in the lower tract and also decreased the pathology of the fallopian tubes by 87.5 per cent in the upper tract," he said, describing how it was able to reduce chlamydial shedding, which may prevent person-to-person transmission and prevent tubal infertility in women. Oakville resident Dr. James Mahony is among researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton who are on the verge of developing a vaccine for chlamydia. | submitted photo Mahony, a professor of Pathology and Molecular Medicine for McMaster's Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, and a researcher at St. Joseph Healthcare Hamilton's Research Institute, explained earlier research identified three proteins as essential in chlamydia being able to infect cells and cause disease. The three proteins were then fused together, injected into animals to make antibodies and tested to see if the antibodies could prevent chlamydia's ability to infect a cell. "Sure enough, it inhibits chlamydia's ability to infect by 90 per cent," said Mahony. "So then we thought if we can make antibodies that can block infection, what about using it as a vaccine and immunizing animals, then challenging the animals with live chlamydia -- in other words, infecting the animals -- and seeing if the vaccine can reduce the bacterial replication, so that's exactly what we did." Mahony notes it's important that a vaccine is developed to protect against infection and prevent tubal infertility down the road, especially when considering the fact that many people who are infected with chlamydia are asymptomatic. About 70-90 per cent of women who get infected don't show any signs or symptoms, he said. "So if you don't know you're infected, you're not going to get tested, you're not going to get diagnosed, you're not going to get treated and you're not going to be able to prevent the upper tract infection," Mahony continued. "It's a nasty road to go down." Antibiotics used to treat chlamydia are great when taken at the right time, but if it's too late damage done is irreversible, he added. Mahony said there are three million new cases of chlamydia in just the U.S. alone. People can even catch a strain of chlamydia called trachoma, which is an eye infection caused by the STD. Noting it's the leading cause of preventable blindness affecting millions of people in many resource-poor regions of the world, Mahony said developing a vaccine based on their vaccine prototype has the potential to protect against most strains of chlamydia, including trachoma. The vaccine prototype will be tested on guinea pigs next and other animal models before it can move on to human trials. Researchers will also test for effectiveness against different strains of chlamydia and in different formulations. Mahony admits it could take years before the vaccine is available for human use. A STEP BEYOND IN CARE Salima Kassam Reg. 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