What do you do after you help develop a vaccine that plays a role in halting the global pandemic that’s been plaguing the world for more than a year? If you’re the research team behind the Oxford/AstraZenca COVID-19 vaccine, you gear up to do it all over again.
While not a global pandemic, the CDC does consider gonorrhea an “urgent public health threat,” as it continues to develop resistance to the antibiotic drugs once considered the gold standard treatment. With now only one class of antibiotics still effective against the STD, the World Health Organization calls drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoea a “priority pathogen.”
That’s one reason CARB-X has awarded $2 million to University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute to develop a novel vaccine to prevent gonorrhea. The project is currently in lead optimization, with award money set to support further optimization work, scale-up and eventually production of the vaccine for in-human studies.
The vaccine, dubbed dmGC_0817560 NOMV, comprises fluid-filled blisters from the outer surface of gonococcus, called native outer membrane vesicles (NOMV). The intention is for the vaccine to not only induce protective immunity against gonorrhea that will prevent individuals from developing the disease, but also interrupt the spread of antibiotic resistance found in gonococcal bacteria.
While the U.S. and UK are responsible for a little more than 1.5 million gonorrhea infections a year, that leaves about 76.5 million people. On a global scale, the sexually transmitted disease disproportionally affects individuals in low- and middle-income countries. Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, and his team have purposely designed the vaccine using “simple and easily transferrable technologies” that would allow the vaccine to be produced by manufacturers and healthcare facilities in ill-equipped areas of the world.
Preliminary research of dmGC_0817560 NOMV suggests the vaccine will prevent infections from different strains of gonococcal bacteria, including the most powerful multidrug-resistant strains that are currently spreading at a dangerous rate.
“[Antimicrobial resistance] has the potential to affect all countries and all our lives so this global challenge needs a global solution/ That’s why the UK is providing funding (via CARB-X) to develop a vaccine that could bring a new solution to this dangerous problem,” said Lord Bethell, the UK Minister for Innovation.
A non-profit partnership, CARB-X receives funding from the U.S., UK, Germany and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The organization only funds projects that target drug-resistant bacteria highlighted on the CDC’s antibiotic-resistant threats list, or WHO’s priority bacterial pathogens list—with a special focus on pathogens considered serious, urgent, critical or high.
The CARB-X portfolio is the world’s largest and most diverse antibacterial R&D portfolio with 56 active projects focused exclusively on drug-resistant bacteria, including eight vaccines. For this project, the Jenner Institute is eligible for another $5.3 million if the vaccine research progresses through certain milestones.
Photo: (Left to right) Gary Strickland, Christine Rollier, Cal MacLennan and Chris Dold are developing a new vaccine to prevent infections from different strains of gonococcal bacteria, including the multidrug-resistant strains that are spreading globally at an alarming pace. Credit: CARB-X