Preparation of an Active Undenatured Antigen from Hemophilus Pertussis. ∗

Abstract

Any study of the use of vaccines in whooping cough must take into consideration two basic facts, first that the causal agent is generally conceded to be the Bordet-Gengou bacillus, 1 and second, that this organism is capable of yielding high antibody titres in the vaccine treated host, as well as in the convalescent patient. 2 On purely a priori grounds then, one would rather expect to find formidable statistics evidencing the protective value and perhaps the therapeutic efficiency of pertussis vaccine. Yet the past 25 years has witnessed no convincing trend in this direction. That the outlook is not altogether dismal is indicated by such clinical series as those of Sauer, 3 and Madsen, 4 and it seems likely that much of the discordance in the literature reflects the multiplicity of methods used in preparation of the vaccine rather than a failure of the basic tenets of vaccine therapy.

Krueger 5 has recently emphasized the rôle of denaturation reactions in altering the antigenicity of bacterial preparations and has pointed out that these reactions probably occur to a very considerable degree during the physical and chemical manipulations incident to the killing of bacterial suspensions, as ordinarily carried out. To obviate the denaturation factor somewhat he has physically disrupted living bacterial cells of various kinds and has put into solution or suspension the cellular components released by this method. After removal of residual live cells by ultrafiltration the filtrate is employed as an antigen. The present paper details the procedure followed in making Hemophilus pertussis antigen of this type for clinical experimental studies in immunization and therapy.

We were convinced by preliminary work that the present antigen should be prepared from smooth pathogenic types (Phase I of Leslie and Gardner) 6 and to that end constantly renew our stock strains, replacing the latter at brief intervals with new strains obtained from cough plates.