AI Summary
A new vaccine for Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is being tested on volunteers for the first time in a clinical trial led by Professor Teresa Lambe at the University of Oxford. The vaccine aims to confirm its safety and understand how individuals develop immunity. If successful, it would be the first step in creating a new vaccine against CCHF. Currently, there are no approved vaccines or treatments for CCHF.
A University of Oxford study has administered a new vaccine against tick-borne virus Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) to volunteers for the first time.
Launched on the 4th of August 2023, the clinical trial of the ChAdOx2 CCHF vaccine aims to confirm its safety and understand how individuals develop immunity following vaccination.
The study is led by Professor Teresa Lambe, Principal Investigator at the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG) and Pandemic Sciences Institute (PSI) at the University of Oxford. Professor Lambe co-designed the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and her team have been developing a vaccine against CCHF using similar technology for the last 5 years.
The vaccine is being administered to healthy volunteers ages 18 – 55 in the Oxfordshire area, with participants receiving two doses of the vaccine 12 weeks apart. Participants are being closely monitored for the next 12 months to understand how they respond to the vaccine and whether they make antibodies against the CCHF virus. If they do, this would be the first step in creating a new vaccine against CCHF and a milestone for pandemic preparedness.
There are currently no approved vaccines or treatments for CCHF, and yet sadly up to 40 per cent of people admitted to hospital with the disease will die. In the absence of a vaccine, the only way to reduce infection is to raise awareness of the risk factors and signs of the disease.
This trial is an important step in our development of a vaccine, which we hope will offer