Production of Wild-Type Measles Hemagglutinin in hte Yeast

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Nakano, Eileen T. AWARDEE ORGANIZATION: Hawaii Biotechnology group, Inc. 99-193 Aiea Heights Dr. Aiea, HI 96701 TELEPHONE NUMBER: (808) 486-5333 AWARDEE NUMBER: 200-93-0668 The incidence of measles infections in North America has recently increased. Sequence comparison between new wild-type isolates and the vaccine strain (Moraten) show distinct genetic variation, which may be in response to immunologic pressure and be the cause of the resurgence. To aid in the surveillance of these new measles outbreaks and possibly provide components of a subunit vaccine, Phase I research will assess the expression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae of four amino-terminally truncated hemagglutinin (HA) proteins of a recent wild-type isolate. The proteins encoded by each clone will begin following N-terminal truncations of 10%, 20%, 25%, and 50% and extend to HA's normal C-terminus. Phase II research will focus on developing diagnostics to monitor measles infections and epidemics and evaluation of immunoprophylaxis induced by the yeast-expressed HA.