Hot topic: What does the future hold for vaccines?
Vaccines are not a new medical technology.
It is almost 230 years since Edward Jenner, a British doctor, inoculated eight-year-old James Phipps with fluid from a cowpox sore in a successful attempt to prove it would protect the boy from the scourge of the time, smallpox.
So, it is perhaps surprising that scepticism and downright hostility to vaccines remains today – particularly in parts of Western societies.
That scepticism has only grown since the turn of the 21st century, despite the thoroughly debunked 1998 claims of (ex-Dr) Andrew Wakefield that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine might trigger autism. On the eve of World Immunization Week, which starts tomorrow (Thursday April 24), it is worth remembering the huge positive impact that vaccines have had on global health.
They are estimated to have saved at least 154 million lives since the mid-1970s, according to a major study published in 2024 by the World Health Organization, reported in The Lancet.
Given the push-back against the MMR vaccine in particular, it is also worth bearing in mind that, according to the same study, vaccination against measles has saved the lion’s share of those lives – a staggering 94 million.
Some two-thirds of the total lives saved (101 million) were infants.
Former WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom consequently described vaccines as “among the most powerful [health] interventions in history”.
Covid vaccines are thought to have saved some 2.5 million lives – mainly older people – according to one 2024 study.
So, what now?
Despite the well-publicised “vaccine wars”, including daily twists and turns in the US, the future for vaccines looks bright.
New technologies hold great promise for preventing a range of infectious diseases that are caused by viruses, bacteria and other pathogens, which have proved difficult to combat effectively to date.
There is also huge excitement about the potential of vaccines (both personalised and “off-the-shelf”) to treat and even prevent certain cancers.
mRNA technology, showcased to such effect during the Covid pandemic with the BioNTech / Pfizer and Moderna jabs, is just one technology being explored.
Among Optimum’s clients alone, Denmark-based MinervaX is currently testing in clinical trials a vaccine to protect pregnant women (and more pertinently, their unborn babies) against the bacteria Group B Streptococcus (GBS). Globally, GBS causes around 91,000 deaths of newborn babies a year, as well as over 46,000 stillbirths. Invasive GBS can also wreak havoc in elderly people, and MinervaX is testing its vaccine as a preventative in this population too.
Liverpool’s ReNewVax is developing a ‘universal’ vaccine (RVX-001) to protect against all serotypes of another common bacteria, Streptococcus pneumoniae, which is one of the main causes of life-threatening diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis. This bacterium accounts for 1.9 million deaths a year worldwide. Current vaccines protect against some, but by no means all, serotypes, and are expensive to make.
Vicebio, a London-based firm with offices in Belgium and Australia, is creating a suite of multivalent vaccines to protect against a range of common respiratory diseases including RSV, hMPV, PIV3, and COVID. The Company’s lead asset, VXB-241, a bivalent vaccine targeting RSV-hMPV, is currently in the second stage of its Phase 1 clinical trial undergoing safety evaluation in vulnerable populations.
Meanwhile, Oxford University spin-out Infinitopes, which is backed by Cancer Research UK, has just been granted regulatory approval to start a UK clinical trial of its “off-the-shelf” vaccine ITOP1 to help stop oesophageal cancer from returning in patients undergoing surgical treatment for the disease. Infinitopes believes the vaccine has potential to help prevent the recurrence of other cancers too.
Of course, these examples only provide a tiny glimpse of what is happening worldwide in terms of next-generation vaccines. Despite current turbulence, there is a lot to look forward to.
