Daniela Vasileva Pencheva, Elena Ilieva Velichkova, Denis Zdravkov Sandarov, Adrian Draganov Cardoso, Maria Hristova Mileva, Petia Dinkova Genova- Kalou and Rayna Bryaskova
“Ghost” vaccines are an innovative idea to obtain better results of immunization due to the presence of fuller spectrum of saved antigenic determinants and development of protective immunity. E.coli O 104 was tested with the aim to be studied as potential ghost vaccine. For this purpose, the strain E.coli O 104 was inactivated by silver nanoparticles (AgNps) stabilized in polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) in order to produce “ghost” cells. An experiment with rabbits immunized with E.coli O 104 antigen treated according to the classical heat treatment method and other E.coli O 104 antigen inactivated with the tested AgNps/PVA hybrid material showed the advantage of the second used inactivated antigen. It was established that the specific titer of the immunized with “ghost” cells rabbit which were obtained by inactivated with AgNps/PVA antigen was earlier achieved and the protective immunity was equivalent to that of processed antigen according to a classical methodology.