Adult Vaccines
New vaccines are urgently needed for a variety of diseases including malaria, a major killer in the developing world and of travellers, and hepatitis C virus which causes liver disease and death. For other infections there are vaccines which could work much better or against a wider range of disease strains, such as those against tuberculosis and influenza. The development of a new range of attenuated viral vectors, which are non-replication competent but very potent, allows all these diseases to be tackled in a related manner. Oxford has one of the leading programmes globally using this technology and promising vaccines against all four diseases are in phase I or II clinical trials. In the last year the malaria programme has found simian adenoviruses to offer a new safe option for vaccination; the hepatitis programme has initiated the first ever vaccine trial using two different adenoviral vectors in a “prime-boost” approach; the influenza work has recorded the strongest ever cellular immunity after any vaccination; and the TB programme has progressed to large scale efficacy testing. This well-integrated programme of new vaccine testing promises to lead to the licensure and deployment of the first of a quite different type of vaccine that could be useful for immunotherapy as well as prophylaxis
