16th International Pathogenic Neisseria Conference: Recent progress towards effective meningococcal disease vaccines

The report describes developments in meningococcal disease vaccines presented at the 16th International Pathogenic Neisseria Conference, Rotterdam, 7-12 September 2008. Great progress has been made by the Meningitis Vaccine Project to provide an affordable and effective serogroup A conjugate vaccine for use in the meningitis belt of Sub-Saharan Africa. The vaccine has been shown to be safe and to produce excellent immune responses in phase 2 clinical trials in India and Africa in the target populations and will be rolled out to the worst affected countries from 2009. This vaccine has the potential to make a huge impact on public health in this region. The conference heard that the use of an epidemic strain-specific outer membrane vesicle (OMV) vaccine in New Zealand has been discontinued. Views for and against this decision were presented. Several MenB vaccines have progressed to clinical evaluation. The most advanced are the Novartis five recombinant protein vaccine and the Wyeth vaccine based on two factor H binding protein variants. Promising results from both vaccines were presented. There were also presentations on OMV vaccines with genetically-detoxified lipooligosaccharide and overexpressed heterologous antigens, OMVs from Neisseria lactamica and recombinant Opa proteins.