Metabolically engineered probiotic OMVs as nanovaccine mediating sequential immunomodulation for chronic bone infection immunotherapy

  • Cell Rep Med. 2026 Jun 16;7(6):102842. doi: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102842.
Jie Lei  1 Bide Tong  1 Shihao Zhang  1 Zixuan Ou  1 Dingchao Zhu  1 Xingyu Zhou  1 Huaizhen Liang  1 Zhengdong Zhang  1 Lei Tan  2 Cao Yang  3 Xiaobo Feng  4
Affiliations
  • 1. Department of Orthopaedics, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China.
  • 2. Department of Orthopaedics, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China. Electronic address: [email protected].
  • 3. Department of Orthopaedics, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China. Electronic address: [email protected].
  • 4. Department of Orthopaedics, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China. Electronic address: [email protected].
Abstract

Chronic, drug-resistant bone Infection caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) features an immunosuppressive niche enabling persistent Infection and impaired bone healing. A specific treatment requires initial Antibacterial immune activation against Infection, followed by reshaping an anti-inflammatory microenvironment for later bone repair. Here, we screen Lactococcus lactis outer membrane vesicles (Lac-OMVs) with first-stage dendritic cell (DC) activation and later stage inflammatory macrophage repolarization potential. Mechanistically, enrichment of the nicotinamide metabolism pathway within Lac-OMVs is discovered, with nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) as a key anti-inflammatory mediator. NAD+-enriched Lac-OMVs (NAD+-Lac-OMVs) are thus metabolically engineered via targeted culture condition optimization, exerting biphasic immunomodulatory effects: (1) early-stage DC activation establishes robust humoral immunity, protecting against primary and recurrent MRSA challenge (99.35% and 98.07% Bacterial clearance rates, respectively); and (2) later stage targeted NAD+ delivery reprograms inflammatory macrophages at the defect site, resolving inflammation and establishing a pro-osteogenic microenvironment (∼10 times higher bone-repair rate).

Keywords
NAD(+); OMVs; antibacterial nanovaccine; chronic bone infection; immune microenvironment regulation; nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide; probiotic outer membrane vesicles.
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