NEW DELHI: The first-in-human vaccine trial for the deadly Nipah virus, which impacts many Asian countries, including India, has been launched by scientists at the University of Oxford.
The trials of the ChAdOx1 NipahB vaccine, consisting of 51 people aged 18 to 55, will be led by the Oxford Vaccine Group.
There is no vaccine yet for the Nipah virus (NiV), which is transmitted to humans through contact with infected animals such as bats and pigs. Fruit bats, also called flying foxes, are the animal reservoir for NiV in nature.
Despite the first outbreaks of Nipah virus, a zoonotic virus, occurring 25 years ago in Malaysia and Singapore, there are currently no approved vaccines or treatments.
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"Nipah virus was first identified in 1998, and yet 25 years on the global health community still has no approved vaccines or treatments for this devastating disease," said the trial's Principal Investigator, Brian Angus, from the University of Oxford's Nuffield Department of Medicine.
"Due to the high mortality rate and the nature of Nipah virus transmission, the disease is identified as a priority pandemic pathogen. This vaccine trial is an important milestone in identifying a solution that could prevent local outbreaks occurring, while also helping the world prepare for a future global pandemic," he added.
The Nipah virus can also be transmitted through food contaminated with saliva, urine, and excreta of infected animals, or directly between people.
"This trial is a step forward in efforts to build a suite of tools to protect against this killer virus. Knowledge gained could also inform development of other Paramyxovirus countermeasures," said In-Kyu Yoon, acting executive director of vaccine research & development at CEPI, the funders of the trial.
The project will run over the next 18 months, with further trials expected to follow in a Nipah-affected country.
The vaccine uses the same adenovirus vector as the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to target a component of the Nipah virus.
In India, outbreaks have been reported from Kerala. In September last year, six laboratory-confirmed Nipah virus cases, including two deaths, in Kozhikode district, Kerala, were reported.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the outbreak in Kerala last year was the sixth outbreak of Nipah virus in India since 2001.
A survey conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute of Virology (ICMR-NIV) has found evidence that the Nipah virus is in circulation in the bat population across nine states and one union territory in the country.
Apart from Kerala, the presence of Nipah viral antibodies in bats were also found in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya and Pondicherry, the survey said.
The virus, which is recognised by the WHO as a priority disease requiring urgent research, belongs to the same family of paramyxoviruses as more well-known pathogens like measles.
The case-fatality rates in outbreaks across Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, and Singapore typically range from 40% to 100%, the WHO said. Its symptoms include fever, headache, cough, sore throat, difficulty in breathing, vomiting, disorientation, drowsiness, or confusion, seizures, coma and brain swelling (encephalitis).