Vaccines against gonorrhea: A tough nut to crack
Dr. Scott Gray-Owen | November 12, 2025 12-1pm ET
The absence of naturally-acquired immunity in Neisseria gonorrhoeae-infected individuals and failure of early vaccine development efforts have often led to fear that vaccine-mediated protection would not be achievable. Recognition that outer membrane vesicle-based vaccines that were developed to target serogroup B Neisseria meningitidis mediate modest protection against gonorrhea has reinvigorated efforts to develop a broadly-protective gonococcal vaccine. The urgency of this effort has been compelled by the recent increase in the prevalence of infections, emergence of multidrug-resistant strains, and re-emergence of disseminated gonococcal infections.
Learning objectives: (1) Learn about the attributes of N. gonorrhoeae that make it difficult to target. (2) Learn the state of the art with respect to global vaccine development efforts targeting N. gonorrhoeae. (3) Discuss our efforts to engineer a protein subunit vaccine to provide broad coverage against N. gonorrhoeae as an exemplar.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Dr. Scott Gray-Owen
Dr. Gray-Owen is a microbiologist, cell biologist and immunologist with a particular focus on understanding molecular and immunologic interactions between humans and disease-causing bacterial and viral pathogens. His over-arching goal is to understand how these microbes adapt to avoid what are otherwise effective immune defense mechanisms, and to differentiate between pathogenic and protective immune responses so that effective interventions can be developed to avoid the former while harnessing the latter. Beyond leading his own research group’s efforts, Dr. Gray-Owen is Director of the Toronto High Containment Laboratories, which includes a molecular and immunology core as well as the biosafety containment level 3 (CL3) facilities to support academic, government and industrial infectious disease research. He is Director of the Emerging & Pathogenic Infections Consortium (EPIC), which supports the broad research community’s ongoing focus on combatting the highest priority infectious challenges, and is Co-Director of the Canadian Hub for Health Intelligence and Innovation in Infectious Diseases (HI3), which brings together Ontario’s academic institutions, government agencies and industry partners to promote pandemic preparedness, sustainability and resiliency in Canada’s biomanufacturing industry. Dr. Gray-Owen is also co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Engineered Antigens Inc., a company focused on structure-based design of vaccine immunogens targeting human and livestock pathogens.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR: Dr. Sumudu Perera
Dr. Sumudu Perera is a Research Scientist at MicrobeDx Inc. She completed her PhD at the University of Saskatchewan on molecular diagnostic techniques and characterization of antimicrobial resistance in sexually transmitted infection pathogen N. gonorrhoeae. Her research focuses on rapid diagnosis, antimicrobial susceptibility testing, antibiotic-resistance trends, molecular epidemiology and mechanisms of resistance in N. gonorrhoeae, urinary tract infection, and sepsis causing pathogens. She is Treasurer of IUSTI-Canada.
