Q Fever, a bacterial infection that can be fatal in about 5% of chronic cases, currently has no widely available vaccine, so researchers are engineering a harmless virus-like particle to train the immune system against it. The problem is that *Coxiella burnetii*, the bacterium causing Q Fever, is highly infectious—a tiny dose can cause disease—and survives for long periods in the environment, sparking annual outbreaks in humans and livestock worldwide. Acute infection brings severe headaches and sometimes pneumonia, while chronic disease, which strikes roughly 5% of patients, typically attacks heart valves and is usually fatal without treatment. Existing vaccines are limited or unavailable. The consortium has already attached Q Fever antigens to a modified Hepatitis B virus core particle, creating a shell that mimics a real virus but lacks genetic material, so it cannot cause infection. This phase 2 study will test the most promising candidates against live *Coxiella burnetii* in animal models, identify the best formulation and dosage, and advance the platform toward commercial production and regulatory safety testing. If successful, this work could deliver a practical vaccine for a neglected global threat—protecting farmers, abattoir workers, and military personnel, and preventing the quiet, recurring outbreaks that disrupt both human health and livestock industries.
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This project addresses the need for new vaccines for global epidemics by the development of a virus-like particle (VLP) based platform technology to deliver a vaccine against Q Fever. The causal agent of Q fever, Coxiella burnetii has been identified as an agent of concern due to its low infectious dose, the ability of the organism to survive for long periods in the environment and cause significant outbreaks in both humans and animals. Outbreaks of Q fever are recorded in humans and animals on an annual basis, worldwide. Acute infection with C. burnetii usually presents as a self-limiting febrile illness often accompanied by severe headaches and in severe cases atypical pneumonia occurs. Chronic disease, typically presenting as endocarditis, occurs in approximately 5 % of cases and without treatment is usually fatal. Formed of the proteins that assemble to form the viral structure such as the capsid or envelope, a VLP mimics an invading virus but is unable to infect and cause infection as it does not contain the necessary genetic code. When used for immunisation, VLPs are recognised as foreign agents and the densely packed arrangement of antigens on the surface of the particles elicits a strong immune response. Mologic have developed a derivative of the Hepatitis B virus core VLP which allows the attachment of unrelated antigens, for example from other viruses or bacteria, to the surface of the particle such that they are displayed to the immune system with the same immunogenic characteristics as a whole virus. The SBRI funding “New vaccines for global epidemics: development and manufacture” has allowed further exploitation of this VLP technology using the causal agent of Q Fever (Coxiella burnetii) as a target and enabled collaboration with experts from Dstl, PHE and Iceni Diagnostics, without whom the project would not have been feasible. The consortium now wish to further develop the technology to test the efficacy of candidate vaccines against challenge with Coxiella burnetii. This will allow us to identify the most effective candidates for scaled up production and further studies to determine optimal formulations and dosage. The phase 2 study will fund the development of the vaccine platform to a stage that it is ready for commercialisation, manufacture and GLP pre-clinical testing.
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