A new study, led by icddr,b (formerly known as International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh) and funded and supported by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), will work with some of the few survivors of the highly fatal Nipah infection to advance understanding of the body’s response to the virus and support the development of much-needed Nipah vaccines. The announcement follows last week’s Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit, co-hosted by CEPI and the UK Government, bringing together global leaders to unite behind CEPI’s plan to better prepare for future epidemic and pandemic threats.

 More than fifty Nipah survivors are set to take part in the pioneering research which aims to characterise the immune responses generated against the virus in response to previous Nipah outbreaks – and to explore how immunity changes over time. Securing this novel information could provide crucial input to guide the development of tools like diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines. The study will take place in Bangladesh, where outbreaks of the deadly virus have occurred on an annual basis since the start of the twenty-first century. 

 Up to US $ 980,000 will be provided by CEPI to support the research. CEPI is already running a similar partnership with Universiti Malaya to study Nipah survivors in Malaysia. The project with icddr,b will increase the number of survivors being studied while also documenting immunology data from survivors who may have been infected by different Nipah strains compared to those in Malaysia.

In addition to advancing scientific understanding of the virus, the biological material donated by the survivors will be used to support the development of key research tools, like assays and antibody standards, needed for upcoming Phase II clinical trials of Nipah vaccines, currently scheduled to start in mid-to-late 2022. 

CEPI’s goal, announced as part of its US $3.5bn pandemic preparedness plan, is to advance R&D towards licensure of a Nipah vaccine. CEPI has to date invested up to US $100 million in four promising Nipah vaccine candidates, being developed by teams across academia and industry: Auro Vaccines and PATH, Public Health Vaccines, the University of Tokyo, and the University of Oxford. Programmes are progressing, with vaccine candidates developed by Auro Vaccines and PATH and Public Health Vaccines being the first in the world to reach in-human (Phase I) trials. 

The assays and antibody standards—developed in coordination with scientists at the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) with expertise in biological standards—will be made available to both CEPI-funded and other Nipah vaccine developers to progress their programmes. These tools are set to play a major role in supporting future regulatory review of Nipah vaccines, especially when late-stage efficacy trials may be difficult to conduct due to the sporadic nature of outbreaks.

CEPI’s funding for the project will also support building local laboratory capacity in Bangladesh to prepare for clinical trials and new outbreaks of Nipah or other emerging infectious diseases. This furthers CEPI’s aim to enhance and expand global collaboration through building a more robust and effective global preparedness and response architecture.

Dr Melanie Saville, Executive Director of Vaccine R&D at CEPI, said: “As the ongoing COVID-19 crisis shows, those who have tested positive for potentially deadly diseases can provide tremendous information to advance our understanding of how a virus operates and how the body responds to infection. Such data is also crucial to inform the development of lifesaving tools, like vaccines.