The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is sponsoring a clinical trial of a Lassa fever prevention vaccine, according to an announcement. The trial has started enrolling participants.
According to the NIH, 55 participants aged 18-50, in good health, will partake in the trial. The “safety and immunogenicity of three different concentrations of the vaccine candidate” will be tested. Additionally, “participants will receive two injections, delivered 28 days apart, of either the vaccine candidate or a Food and Drug Administration-licensed rabies vaccine (control).”
The vaccine candidate, LASSARAB, “is based on a weakened (attenuated) rabies vaccine that is subsequently inactivated to make the vaccine candidate. The experimental vaccine is then modified so that it expresses all the rabies proteins found in inactivated rabies vaccine along with a Lassa virus surface protein called the glycoprotein precursor complex (GPC). If LASSARAB is shown to be safe and elicits a good immune response to both the rabies proteins and the Lassa GPC, it could be used to prevent both diseases pending further testing in clinical trials and subsequent approval by the FDA.”
