Jenner Institute developing vaccine to prevent gonorrhoea

The Jenner Institute has been awarded $2 million to develop a vaccine to prevent gonorrhoea, in a bid to combat the bacterial infection’s resistance to most antibiotics.

The funding comes from the non-profit partnership CARB-X and an additional $5.3 million will be offered to the Jenner Institute if the project meets certain milestones.

Gonorrhoea has developed resistance to most antibiotics, with only one class remaining effective in the treatment of the disease. Data from the World Health Organisation (WHO) between 2009 and 2014 shows that a large number of countries have reported increasing drug-resistant strains of gonorrhoea to azithromycin and to the current last-resort treatment - extended-spectrum cephalosporins (ESCs) oral cefixime or injectable ceftriaxone

It’s estimated that around 78 million people are infected with gonorrhoea every year, with infections potentially leading to conditions such as pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility in women and sterility in men. Infections also increase a person’s risk of contracting HIV and babies born to an infected woman can develop blindness.

The disease is most prevalent in low-and middle-income countries where healthcare facilities can be sparse and ill-equipped, particularly in the poorest countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Jenner Institute’s gonorrhoea vaccine, dmGC_0817560 NOMV, is intended to induce protective immunity against gonorrhoea that will prevent individuals from developing gonorrhoea, whilst also interrupting the spread of antibiotic resistance found in gonococcal bacteria.

The vaccine will be produced using simple and easily transferable technologies which the researchers hope could enable it to be produced by manufacturers in LMIC settings.

The project is still only in the early development phase with the researchers attempting to identify the most promising preclinical vaccine candidate. The CARB-X funding will be used to support optimisation work and scale-up, followed by production of the vaccine at the University of Oxford’s Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility for a first-in-human study.

“Because of antibiotic resistance, treating gonorrhoea is challenging and in some cases not possible because of a lack of antibiotics that are effective,” said Erin Duffy, chief of Research and Development of CARB-X, a global non-profit partnership led by Boston University and dedicated to funding and supporting the development of innovative products to address antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. “Vaccines are powerful tools in the prevention of bacterial infections. Jenner’s vaccine project is an exciting approach which, if successful, could prevent the disease, and significantly curb the spread of resistant bacteria across the globe.”

“The Jenner Institute at Oxford University is delighted to be partnering with CARB-X in the development of a new vaccine against gonorrhoea, which will be an important weapon in the battle against antibiotic-resistant bacteria,“ said professor Adrian Hill, Director of the  Jenner Institute. The Jenner Institute is well known for its recent success in leading the development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.