{"doi":"10.1101/2024.01.23.576900","title":"Discovery and engineering of the antibody response against a prominent skin commensal","abstract":"ABSTRACT The ubiquitous skin colonist Staphylococcus epidermidis elicits a CD8 + T cell response pre-emptively, in the absence of an infection 1 . However, the scope and purpose of this anti-commensal immune program are not well defined, limiting our ability to harness it therapeutically. Here, we show that this colonist also induces a potent, durable, and specific antibody response that is conserved in humans and non-human primates. A series of S. epidermidis cell-wall mutants revealed that the cell surface protein Aap is a predominant target. By colonizing mice with a strain of S. epidermidis in which the parallel β-helix domain of Aap is replaced by tetanus toxin fragment C, we elicit a potent neutralizing antibody response that protects mice against a lethal challenge. A similar strain of S. epidermidis expressing an Aap-SpyCatcher chimera can be conjugated with recombinant immunogens; the resulting labeled commensal elicits high titers of antibody under conditions of physiologic colonization, including a robust IgA response in the nasal mucosa. Thus, immunity to a common skin colonist involves a coordinated T and B cell response, the latter of which can be redirected against pathogens as a novel form of topical vaccination.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2024,"id":486603,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9513,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":623757,"name":"Katherine D. Bauman","orcid":"0000-0003-1154-8189","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1016310,"name":"Y. Erin Chen","orcid":"0000-0001-9452-1402","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1016312,"name":"Victor K. Yu","orcid":"0000-0001-5284-2232","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":860483,"name":"Pranav V. Lalgudi","orcid":"0000-0003-1653-2338","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":643703,"name":"Arash Naziripour","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1016311,"name":"Alessandra Veinbachs","orcid":"0000-0001-8419-3097","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1208289,"name":"Jennie Phung","orcid":"0009-0005-9252-4315","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":381248,"name":"Tam T. D. Nguyen","orcid":"0000-0002-2507-8678","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1209019,"name":"Joyce M. Swenson","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1330815,"name":"Yue E. Lee","orcid":null,"position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1017267,"name":"Alex Dimas","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807107,"name":"Sunit Jain","orcid":"0000-0002-5888-3702","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807108,"name":"Xiandong Meng","orcid":"0000-0002-3382-5274","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1209022,"name":"Thi Phuong Thao Pham","orcid":null,"position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":497507,"name":"Aishan Zhao","orcid":"0000-0002-9010-7981","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":996474,"name":"Layla J. Barkal","orcid":"0000-0002-4734-7197","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":481151,"name":"Inta Gribonika","orcid":"0000-0002-5694-1315","position":17,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":399793,"name":"Koen K. A. Van Rompay","orcid":"0000-0002-7375-1337","position":18,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":225267,"name":"Yasmine Belkaid","orcid":"0000-0001-9962-3571","position":19,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":16968,"name":"Christopher O. Barnes","orcid":"0000-0003-2754-5951","position":20,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":44570,"name":"Michael A. Fischbach","orcid":"0000-0003-3079-8247","position":21,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":535259,"name":"Djenet Bousbaine","orcid":"0000-0003-2683-9544","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":52,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:08:01.404471Z","pmid":"38328052","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}