Developing new vaccines against pneumonia

Pneumonia is the leading cause of death in children less than five years old in the developing world. Each year, more than two million children die from pneumonia, mostly in low-resource countries. Pneumococcus, the bacterium that is the most common cause of severe pneumonia, kills about one million of these children each year. Pneumococcus also causes sepsis (blood infection) and meningitis (brain infection), which kill and disable children worldwide, and is one of the leading causes of bacterial otitis media (middle ear infection). Vaccines are a critical strategy for protecting children from this deadly disease.

Pneumococcus has more than 90 serotypes, which vary by region. The current pneumococcal conjugate vaccine includes the seven serotypes most common in the United States, but there is no vaccine today that is optimal for use in children in developing countries.

Working to provide widespread protection

PATH is pursuing a number of approaches to develop pneumococcal vaccines that will be effective and affordable in the countries that most urgently need them. The pneumococcal vaccine program at PATH is reaching out to partner with scientists and manufacturers to advance their research toward preventing this childhood disease. We are working from initial discovery through clinical trials to shorten the timeline for developing vaccines to serve the countries in greatest need.

One approach that PATH believes holds particular promise is the development of “common protein” vaccines. Vaccines containing proteins that are common to all pneumococcus serotypes could provide broad protection to children worldwide. PATH has also partnered to develop an inactivated whole-cell vaccine against pneumococcus that could provide affordable and broad protection for children. Finally, PATH is exploring the potential of new conjugate technologies that would more efficiently attach the antigen—the agent prompting an immune response—to “carrier proteins” in order to target coverage of strains that are most prevalent in developing countries and to reduce the cost compared with the currently available vaccine.

PATH also supports activities to benefit the pneumococcal research community. Research activities include cataloging pneumococcal strain collections, assessing what kind of preclinical testing should be used to evaluate vaccines, and identifying production processes so that vaccines are affordable for distribution by public health systems in low-income countries. PATH and the J. Craig Venter Institute (formerly The Institute for Genomic Research) recently completed sequencing the genomes of five pneumococcal strains, which include serotypes 1 and 5 that are more relevant to developing-world populations.

PATH collaborates with partners such as vaccine manufacturers, academic and research institutions, the World Health Organization, PneumoADIP (Pneumococcal Accelerated Development and Introduction Plan) at Johns Hopkins University, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Through public-private partnerships, PATH is accelerating development of safe, effective, and affordable pneumococcal vaccines to protect children worldwide.