New Meningitis B Vaccine
With the recent outbreak of bacterial meningitis at the in Kent, we wanted to take a look at the treatments available and currently in development.
Last year a group from the University of Oxford published a study that established a gene-based vaccine that can induce antibody response against the bacteria causing group B meningococcus disease (MenB).
The vaccine uses the same adenovirus vector platform that was used in the Oxford-AstraZenica vaccine against COVID-19, this time it is used to express protein that is present on the outer membrane of MenB bacteria. With no recorded side effects, 100% of the recipients of this vaccine (in two doses) exhibited antibody responses to the specific strain targeted by the vaccine. This does mean that such a vaccine would only be effective agains individual strains and suggests that a multivalent approach would be appropriate to give protection against a wider variety of strains of the bacteria.
This goes to show that when the world’s resources were focused on the common goal of controlling the spread of COVID-19, the science that came from this shared effort has gone on to benefit other areas of biomedicine.
Please read the paper here, and share your thoughts and ratings!
Our thoughts go out to those affected by the current MenB outbreak hope for a speedy recovery.