ZapVax - A novel protein-based broad coverage pneumococcal vaccine

**ZapVax** 是一种新型疫苗，旨在诱导针对一种称为肺炎球菌的细菌的保护性免疫。肺炎球菌是全球肺炎和脑膜炎的最常见原因，每年造成100多万儿童、老年人和免疫功能低下者死亡。旨在减少全球肺炎球菌疾病负担的研究已导致疫苗的开发，如PPSV-23（默克）和PCV-13（辉瑞）。这些疫苗产生了重大影响，在大流行之前，肺炎球菌疫苗已成为全球最大的疫苗市场，2020年的年销售额约为60亿英镑。预计到2028年，该市场将以每年5%以上的速度增长至90亿英镑。尽管现有的疫苗已被证明能有效减少肺炎球菌疾病的发生，但它们仅对它们所覆盖的有限数量的肺炎球菌菌株有效，它们依赖于技术，不幸的是，这使得它们的制造成本高昂，而且关键的是，限制了它们保护所有100种已知肺炎球菌菌株的能力。这种部分覆盖实际上鼓励了现有疫苗未覆盖的菌株的出现，这些菌株通常对抗生素具有耐药性，从而增加了这一新出现的问题。总的来说，目前疫苗的缺点，加上新出现的未满足的临床需求，为开发新疫苗提供广泛或完全的保护，以对抗肺炎球菌打开了大门。ZapVax的工作方式与现有的肺炎球菌疫苗完全不同。ZapVax不是针对细菌外部的糖分子-这因菌株而异，从而限制了保护范围，而是针对所有100种肺炎球菌菌株上存在的高度保守蛋白质。我们的研究表明，ZapVax能够诱导对辉瑞PCV-13疫苗覆盖的肺炎球菌菌株以及未覆盖的菌株的等效或更好的保护性免疫应答。ZapVax正在开发一种通用的单次注射疫苗，以帮助保护老年人等弱势群体免受肺炎，脑膜炎和败血症的侵害。研究表明，仅在英国，引入更有效的肺炎球菌疫苗，如ZapVax，可以在10年内预防多达40，000例侵袭性肺炎球菌疾病和多达2，000例死亡。

**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.