By PAT GILL BOLTON

A NEW way of designing a vaccine to prevent meningitis will be possible as a result of research at Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington.

The work has been done on the controversial Synchrotron Radiation Source.

Daresbury lost the next version of the Synchrotron - the Diamond - to its sister laboratory Rutherford Appleton, in Oxfordshire, last year.

The Synchrotron has revealed how some of the meningitis bacteria behave.

The laboratory's press officer, Tony Buckley, explained : "The first line of defence that the body has when it's invaded by a germ is the immune system.

"The 'bouncers' of the immune system are antibodies, which bind on to anything that shouldn't be in the body and prevent it from causing illness.

"What the SRS has revealed is just how crafty the bacteria that causes one form of meningitis is.

"The fight takes place on the surface membrane of the meningitis bacteria. Our antibodies want to bind to a specific protein on this membrane but the bacteria are able to make very subtle changes to this protein so that our antibodies can't cling on to it.

"It's like a bouncer trying to eject a customer who immediately changes shape, preventing the bouncer from getting hold of the customer and throwing that person out. Only it's much more subtle.

"By revealing just how it happens at a molecular level, studies on the Synchrotron have opened the door to a new way of designing a vaccine."