KU Leuven, Pasteur Institute in Dakar collab for local vaccine production in Africa
At the moment, barely 1% of the necessary vaccines for Africa are produced locally. The ambition is to increase this to 60% by 2040. KU Leuven is working with the Pasteur Institute in Dakar to remove some important obstacles such as the need for continuous cooling, time-consuming methods for certain blood analyzes from clinical studies, and the lack of of vaccines against several deadly tropical diseases. During the Belgian Economic Mission, the joint project was presented to, among others, Princess Astrid and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hadja Lahbib.
Yellow fever is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes, it occurs in (sub)tropical regions of Africa and Latin America; 500 million people live in the risk zone. The World Health Organization estimates that about 30,000 people die each year from yellow fever. Fortunately, there has been a highly effective vaccine for more than 60 years, which offers decades of protection after a single dose.
African countries are largely dependent on other countries for the production of vaccines in general. Only 1% of the continent’s total vaccine needs are produced on African soil. The ambition is to increase this to 60% by 2040.
The Pasteur Institute in Dakar (PID) has been producing yellow fever vaccine for parts of West Africa for decades. This vaccine is produced in fertilized chicken eggs, which are flown in from Germany. PID wants to jump on the bandwagon to increase its own production of vaccines in Africa. For example, PID is currently building a large facility on the Madiba site, just outside Dakar, which will allow the annual production capacity of yellow fever vaccines to be increased to 30 million doses. In addition, they also want to start production of no less than 300 million doses of other essential vaccines for the local population.
PID, led by Professor Amadou Sall, works closely with Professor Johan Neyts of the Rega Institute at KU Leuven. Together they are looking for solutions to some important challenges in developing and rolling out vaccines for (sub)tropical areas.
Less need for continuous cooling
For example, vaccines must be produced, stored and transported in a cool and temperature-stable chain. Not an easy task in remote tropical regions. Researchers from the Rega Institute and AstriVax have succeeded in developing a way whereby the yellow fever vaccine (and vaccines derived from it) no longer have to be produced in eggs, but in bacteria that can be grown in large culture vessels, fermenters. This allows for significant upscaling, which is also cheap. The vaccines produced are also very thermostable. There is therefore much less need for continuous cooling of the vaccines, so that they can easily reach the local population in remote areas. Professor Nico Vandaele of the KU Leuven research centerAccess to Medicines will work with PID to implement and scale up this production model within the needs of the local ecosystem.
Easier clinical studies
Under the leadership of Professor Kai Dallmeier, the Rega Institute developed a method that will facilitate the analysis of blood samples from clinical trials. PID is currently testing thousands of blood samples from clinical studies in Kenya, Uganda and Senegal, among others, which are studying whether a lower dose of the yellow fever vaccine is as effective as a full dose. For this purpose, antibodies against yellow fever must be determined after vaccination and monitored over time. This analysis, currently a time-consuming and cumbersome procedure, will be much faster and more efficient thanks to Professor Dallmeier’s new method.
New dual-action vaccines
Finally, the Rega Institute and AstriVax are also working on new vaccines against tropical viral infections. For this they use the qualities of the highly efficient yellow fever vaccine. Pieces of the genetic code from other viruses are incorporated into the genetic code of that vaccine, such as those from the viruses that cause rabies or Ebola. These new vaccines then work against both the yellow fever virus and the other virus whose code was inserted. Two birds with one stone. Together with PID, the KU Leuven researchers will further explore this technology for the development of prototype vaccines against various tropical viral infections.