MenAfriVac

MenAfriVac is a vaccine developed for use in sub-Saharan Africa that protects people 1 to 29 years of age against meningococcal bacterium Neisseria meningitidis group A. MenAfriVac costs under US$.50 per dose and reduces carriage of the bacteria from one person to another.^[1][2][3] The Meningitis Vaccine Project, a partnership between the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) and the World Health Organization, worked with a consortium of international partners to develop the vaccine.^[4]

History

The largest meningitis epidemic in African history swept across sub-Saharan Africa from 1996 to 1997, numbering 250,000 new cases of the disease and taking 25,000 lives. Three years later, the World Health Organization held a technical consultation in Cairo, Egypt with African ministers of health and global health leaders to discuss meningitis and the development of a new vaccine. At that meeting, representatives from eight African countries issued a statement saying that the development of a meningococcal vaccine to prevent epidemics was a high priority for them, and concluded that a conjugate meningococcal vaccine would have the potential to prevent future epidemics. They estimated that the new vaccine could become available in three to seven years for US$ 0.40 to $ 1 a dose, providing protection for at least ten years.^[5]

A year later, in 2001, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided a ten-year, $70 million grant to establish the Meningitis Vaccine Project, a partnership between PATH and the World Health Organization. The foundation charged the new project with development, testing, licensure, and mass introduction of a meningococcal conjugate vaccine.^[6] In 2002, the newly-funded collaboration supported reinforced meningitis surveillance activities in 12 countries in Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Togo. Data from the surveillance indicated an increased risk of outbreaks in the future and the continued need for a conjugate A meningitis vaccine.^[7] MenAfriVac is available for widespread use in African meningitis belt countries.^[4]

Manufacture

The Meningitis Vaccine Project partnered with SynCo Bio Partners, a Dutch biotech company, and the US government’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research to develop MenAfriVac, and the Serum Institute of India to manufacture it.

MenAfriVac is a freeze-dried vaccine of a polysaccharide from a type of Neisseria meningitidis called group A. The polysaccharide has been purified by affinity chromatography and bound to a carrier protein called tetanus toxoid. The TT is prepared by extraction by ammonium sulfate precipitation and the toxin is inactivated with formalin the toxin from cultures of Clostridium tetani grown in a modified Mueller-Hinton agar.^[8]

References

External links

• product page