New grant brings meningitis vaccine closer

University scientists hope that new clinical trials will help identify a vaccine against meningitis within the next two years. A team, led by Professor Richard Moxon, Action Research Professor of Paediatrics, and working within the Institute of Molecular Medicine, has been awarded £180,000 by the National Meningitis Trust to carry out the trials. This follows funding of more than £1 million from the Medical Research Council which helped identify a suitable vaccine candidate and demonstrate that it is present in all strains of the disease. Professor Moxon said: `While 10 per cent of the population carries the bacterium which causes meningitis, the disease itself is rare. But it is contagious, strikes quickly, and has a high mortality rate. What we need is a vaccine which we can use to immunise every child at ages 2–4 months.' There are currently vaccines for the Group C strain of the meningococcal disease, which can be effective in adults but not in children under the age of two, making them unsuitable for mass immunisation. A further 60–70 per cent of the cases are of the Group B strain, for which there is no vaccine. The Oxford team is focusing on a particular sugar molecule, lipopolysaccharide (LPS). One of three components of LPS is a promising candidate for a vaccine that is safe and able to protect against the disease if it is injected into humans. `Now the trick is to isolate this LPS component and prepare it in such a way that it can be safely injected into humans and produce the immune response we need', said Professor Moxon.