Vaccines & Immune Biology

Kenneth Kelley of PaxVax in the U.S. seeks to develop a low-cost, single-dose, oral polio vaccine using a live, safe adenovirus containing protein-encoding genes from poliovirus. If successful, this vaccine can be used to eradicate polio while eliminating the risks of vaccine-derived polio disease and poliovirus re-introduction.

David Moss from Lipoxen plc in the United Kingdom aims to develop a non-live polio vaccine using liposomes to entrap and deliver defined poliovirus antigens effectively to the immune system. If successful, the project will expedite the development and global deployment of a simple, economic new polio vaccine.

Jane Cardosa of Sentinext Therapeutics in Malaysia will design recombinant viruses that can generate self-assembling poliovirus-like particles for use in a poliovirus vaccine. Such a vaccine will be important after wild poliovirus has been eradicated so that people will still have access to a protective vaccine without the necessity of maintaining live poliovirus stocks.

Jacob John of Christian Medical College in India will test the theory that poor immunity generated by the oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) may be responsible for persistence of the disease. John will study the effect of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) on gut immunity in children previously given the oral polio vaccine (OPV). Boosting immunity with IPV could result in strategies for accelerating polio eradication.

Ralph Tripp at the University of Georgia in the U.S. will identify genes that, when inhibited, enhance viral replication in the host cell lines used in the manufacture of vaccines in order to reduce the cost of vaccine production. In Phase I, he performed RNA interference screens to identify 21 host genes that, when inhibited, could enhance poliovirus replication and thereby vaccine production. In Phase II, Tripp will broaden his approach to vaccine production against rotaviruses, which cause substantial childhood mortality particularly in developing countries.

Peter Wright of Dartmouth Medical School in the U.S. will determine if preexisting gut immunity predicts shedding of poliovirus vaccine. The study builds on specimens from two previous trials conducted by the WHO. Understanding how inactivated and live poliovirus vaccines protect against shedding of poliovirus is central to strategies for polio eradication.

Simon Carding of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom will test the feasibility of a new technology using live commensal gut bacteria for the controlled delivery of poliovirus antigens to the intestinal mucosa to generate protective viral immunity.

Ian Jones of the University of Reading in the United Kingdom will investigate new methods to produce empty poliovirus capsids. These are virus-like particles that stimulate the same immunity as poliovirus itself but are completely non-infectious. A successful technology could offer cost and safety benefits leading to the replacement of traditional polio vaccines. In Phase I, he provided proof-of-concept for efficient assembly of empty viral capsids in vitro by testing different approaches to reduce the activity of the 3C enzyme, which has been associated with toxicity.

Mark Prausnitz of Georgia Institute of Technology and Steve Oberste of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. will test the feasibility of using microneedle patches to deliver the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) instead of using intramuscular vaccine shots. This new method is designed to lower the required dose, simplify vaccination procedures, and eliminate dangers associated with hypodermic needles.

Yong Zhang of the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention in China will characterize vaccine-derived polioviruses (VDPV), which emerge from the widely used oral polio vaccine and can cause disease outbreaks, to aid surveillance and eradication efforts. Polio has been largely eradicated from many countries by vaccination. However, the vaccine itself is an attenuated form of the poliovirus that can revert back to a virulent form.