A single shot could protect against three deadly viral haemorrhagic fevers—Ebola, Marburg, and Lassa—using a self-amplifying RNA platform that requires only a low dose. This matters because these viruses cause severe outbreaks with high death rates, and existing vaccines are typically single-target, often using live viruses that cannot be given to children or people with weakened immune systems. The synthetic RNA approach avoids those safety concerns and can be manufactured rapidly, since the components for each virus are easily combined. If the phase I human trial shows the vaccine is safe and triggers a strong immune response, the platform could enable stockpiling of a multivalent vaccine for rapid deployment during outbreaks. Because the manufacturing process is fast and the doses are low, hundreds of thousands of doses could be produced in weeks. The developers plan to price the vaccine affordably for low- and middle-income countries, making it accessible to global health organisations that typically lead outbreak response. This would strengthen pandemic preparedness in the UK and beyond, providing a tool to stop haemorrhagic fever outbreaks at their source.
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Our synthetic self-amplifying ribonucleic acid (saRNA) platform provides one of the fastest low-dose and cost-effective approaches to stop viral outbreaks at their source. Building on the success of RNA vaccines deployed during the COVID pandemic, RNA affords significant advantages over more conventional vaccine approaches such as viral vectors, and attenuated pathogens and are safer for individuals unable to receive live attenuated vaccines (e.g. children and the immunocompromised ). Importantly, our experience in developing a saRNA vaccine for COVID has lead to significant improvements in our platform that we seek to deploy in this program. Our program aims to develop a multivalent vaccine against the most common human viral haemorrhagic fevers ( Ebola, Marburg and Lassa fever virus). The choice of targets is based on strong scientific evidence that gene-based approaches can protect against infection in preclinical models. The fully synthetic manufacture and ease of RNA production provides the potential to produce hundreds of thousands of doses within a matter of weeks where the individual vaccine components targeting different haemorrhagic viruses can easily be combined. In this project we will manufacture clinical grade material (GMP) and complete early evaluation of the vaccine in a phase I human clinical trial designed to assess the safety and immunogenicity of our pan-haemorrhagic fever vaccine. Our ability to deliver on the aggressive timelines required to move from manufacture through to completion of a first in human clinical trial within two-year grant funding period is only possible due to the robustness and speed of our manufacturing process and the unique competency of the assembled team in translating vaccine concepts from the bench to the bedside . Ultimately our vision is to use our vaccine platform to ensure UK preparedness for any eventual pandemic and to make vaccines globally available in the event of any outbreak situation. Our approach will ensure appropriate costing for low and middle-income countries and be readily available to organizations focused on global health (e.g. CEPI and WHO): these groups have historically been the first to detect, and/or respond to an outbreak, and are therefore ideally positioned to assist in implementing any vaccination strategy. Our Target Product Profile (TPP) is a stable multivalent vaccine that can elicit protective immunity against the most common human viral haemorrhagic fevers across all populations, has potential for boosting in the absence of anti-vector immunity, and can be rapidly manufactured at low cost.
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