A total of 240 healthy adult participants will take part in the research, following local trial approvals. Participants will be closely monitored, assessing the safety and ability of the vaccine candidate to elicit an immune response against Rift Valley fever. The vaccine has been developed on the University of Oxford’s ChAdOx1 vaccine platform, the same technology behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine which has saved millions of lives worldwide.
Rift Valley fever usually occurs in people following direct contact with infected animals, like sheep, goats and cattle, or bites from infected mosquitoes. While the majority of people infected experience mild disease, a small proportion develop the severe haemorrhagic form, which can cause blindness, convulsions, encephalitis and bleeding, and mortality rates of up to 50%.
Rift Valley fever was first identified in Kenya's Rift Valley, but in recent decades has been detected across much of Africa and also in the Middle East. As a mosquito-borne, and therefore climate-sensitive infectious disease, there is a risk of Rift Valley fever outbreaks spreading to new areas or increasing in frequency or size as a result of extreme or unusual weather events.
While Rift Valley fever vaccines have been registered for animals, no vaccines are currently available or licensed for human use. Both the World Health Organization and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have identified Rift Valley fever as a priority disease for R&D.
Read the full story on the Nuffield Department of Medicine website.