Infection Prevention and Control

Activeimmunity specialists, due to having extensive experience in the field of antibiotic resistance, have produced different generations of antimicrobial biologicals using hen as the immunized organism and the hyperimmune egg as the source of immunologically active proteins. The first generation of products were prepared using the I-PC-2 immunogens and the following generations using the I-SPGA and I-Gary immunogens. The “standard” biological products obtained from hyperimmune eggs contain up to 24 types of antibodies originating from immunization of hens with hospital-collected germs and are used in medical programs for the prevention and treatment of infections with susceptible or antibiotic resistant bacteria. The second category of biological products, the “personalized” ones, are prepared from samples of pathological material harvested from individual patients The idiotype (Id) of an antimicrobial resistant bacterium (ARB) is a unique collection of antibodies produced by the immunized organism against the bacterial antigenic determinants called idiotopes. An idiotype is specific to a particular ARB strain that immunized the organism. Despite being proteins of the humoral immune system, the idiotypes (Ids) can be immunogenic. For this reason ARB-specific Ids have been exploited as therapeutic immunogens in the treatment of specific ARB infected patients. The authors are not aware of documented studies describing the use of hyperimmune eggs targeting antibiotic-resistant bacteria as oral anti-idiotypic vaccine in human beings. We supported this hypothesis by demonstrating the capacity of human beings orally fed hyperimmune eggs to induce systemic immune responses against the same idiotype (active immunity by passive immunity). The first set of study was to demonstrate that chicken that were immunized with the inactivated antimicrobial-resistant bacteria (ARB) produced specific anti-ARB antibodies; the second set of study was to demonstrate that ARB-infected patients presenting clinical symptoms, after being fed anti-ARB hyperimmune eggs developed antibodies that were able to inhibit the binding of egg yolk anti-ARB antibodies to the ARB (original antigen), showing that the anti-ARB antibodies raised in human beings after feeding, were anti-anti-idiotypic antibodies [1,2]. The samples of bacterial strains and cells were collected as skin-scrapings, prostate, urine or sputum samples from clinically affected subjects. Moreover, nasal swabs were taken to determine the nasal colonization with Staphilococcus aureus. These samples were processed in the laboratory and used for immunization of specially bred chickens for this program. The immune response of the immunized chickens was controlled by blood and egg samples. The chicken immunologically active proteins (CIP) were isolated from the hyperimmune eggs and were then used for the treatment of the particular patients from which the pathological materials originated. These technologies have been carried out for the first time in the world and they prove that personalized biologic products may act specifically and efficiently in case of infections with specific pathogenic germs sensitive or resistant to antibiotics. These new personalized biological products may replace antibiotics which have been proved inefficient

in each patient. The treatment with the hyperimmune egg and with the products extracted from it was well tolerated by patients for a long period of time (at least 12 months). Activeimmunty has a telephone call center and a group of specialists who are available for information, a clinic and laboratories specifically designed for this program, in order to prepare the described personalized biological products.