Scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Galveston National Laboratory have been awarded up to $6.4 million in funding to support an international research consortium to crack one of the toughest problems in infectious disease science: determining which immune responses protect people against Lassa fever.
This funding was awarded as part of a joint funding call by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Wellcome, with CEPI providing the funding to UNVEIL, which stands for Unraveling Natural and Vaccine‑Elicited Immunity to Lassa fever.
Lassa fever is a zoonotic viral hemorrhagic illness caused by a virus of the same name that circulates in several West African countries, primarily through contact with infected Mastomys rodents and occasional human-to-human contact. It is thought to affect 100,000–300,000 people every year, although the true disease burden could be much higher.
While many infections are mild, case fatality rates can exceed 20 percent among hospitalized patients, and one in four survivors suffers irreversible hearing loss. Additionally, around 95 percent of pregnancies result in spontaneous abortion.
This research will focus on developing tools to identify immune markers or correlates of protection, blood or cellular markers associated with protection from Lassa fever, to support decision-making in vaccine development.
“Identifying reliable immune markers or, ideally, correlates of protection will remove a huge roadblock,” said Dr. Courtney B. Woolsey, a professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology and the Principal Investigator of the UNVEIL program. “Once we can measure protection in a blood test instead of a prolonged clinical efficacy trial, we can deliver vaccines to impacted communities much faster.”
“A vaccine is urgently needed against Lassa fever, a deadly disease that continues to burden West Africa,” said Dr. Katrin Ramsauer, Lassa Disease Programme Lead at CEPI. “Knowing the immune markers that correspond to protection from Lassa fever infection and disease and could reliably predict the efficacy of a vaccine will be a milestone achievement in our work against Lassa fever. This research could also give us insights into how we can quickly tackle other troublesome hemorrhagic-fever causing pathogens in the same viral family.”