ZapVax - A novel protein-based broad coverage pneumococcal vaccine

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**ZapVax** is a novel vaccine designed to induce protective immunity against a bacterium known as pneumococcus. Pneumococcus is the most common cause of pneumonia and meningitis globally, and responsible for over 1 million deaths every year in children, the elderly and the immunocompromised. Research targeted at reducing the global burden of pneumococcal diseases has led to the development of vaccines such as PPSV-23 (Merck) and PCV-13 (Pfizer). These vaccines have had a major impact, and before the pandemic, pneumococcal vaccines had become the largest global vaccine market with annual sales of around £6bn in 2020\. This market is projected to grow at an annual rate of over 5% to £9bn in 2028\. Although existing vaccines have proven to be effective at reducing the occurrence of pneumococcal disease, they are only effective against the limited number of pneumococcal strains that they cover, they rely on technology that unfortunately makes them costly to manufacture and crucially, limits their ability to protect against all 100 known pneumococcal strains. This partial coverage actually encourages the emergence of strains that are not covered by existing vaccines and these strains are often resistant to antibiotics, increasing this emerging problem. Overall, the shortcomings of current vaccines, coupled to emerging unmet clinical needs, opens the door to opportunities for the development of new vaccines that will offer broad or complete protection against pneumococcus.ZapVax works in a completely different manner to existing pneumococcal vaccines. Instead of targeting the sugar molecules on the outside of the bacteria - which vary from strain to strain, thus limiting the range of protection, ZapVax was designed to target highly conserved proteins that are present on all 100 strains of pneumococcus. Our studies have shown that ZapVax is capable of inducing an equivalent or better protective immune response against pneumococcal strains covered by Pfizer's PCV-13 vaccine, as well as strains that are not covered. ZapVax is being developed as a universal, single shot vaccine to help protect vulnerable groups such as the elderly from pneumonia, meningitis and septicaemia. Research has shown that in the UK alone, the introduction of more effective pneumococcal vaccines, such as ZapVax, could prevent up to 40,000 cases of invasive pneumococcal disease and up to 2,000 deaths over a 10-year period.