A live vaccine rapidly protects against cholera in an infant rabbit model

Abstract

Outbreaks of cholera, a rapidly fatal diarrheal disease, often spread explosively. The efficacy of reactive vaccination campaigns-deploying <i>Vibrio cholerae</i> vaccines during epidemics-is partially limited by the time required for vaccine recipients to develop adaptive immunity. We created HaitiV, a live attenuated cholera vaccine candidate, by deleting diarrheagenic factors from a recent clinical isolate of <i>V. cholerae</i> and incorporating safeguards against vaccine reversion. We demonstrate that administration of HaitiV 24 hours before lethal challenge with wild-type <i>V. cholerae</i> reduced intestinal colonization by the wild-type strain, slowed disease progression, and reduced mortality in an infant rabbit model of cholera. HaitiV-mediated protection required viable vaccine, and rapid protection kinetics are not consistent with development of adaptive immunity. These features suggest that HaitiV mediates probiotic-like protection from cholera, a mechanism that is not known to be elicited by traditional vaccines. Mathematical modeling indicates that an intervention that works at the speed of HaitiV-mediated protection could improve the public health impact of reactive vaccination.