In a bid to fill the Vaccines design gap, Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) has embarked on manufacturing vaccines that will play a vital role in curbing the emerging and re-emerging infections in Africa. Speaking at the Vaccines and Immunity UVRI Theme Day on Friday, UVRI Managing Director Prof. Pontiano Kaleebu revealed that there is a lack of vaccine manufacturing in Africa with only Egypt, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia involved in the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) of Human Vaccines.
This is the first step for UVRI moving towards real Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) so that we can go in the business of Vaccine manufacturing. We have been using vaccines that have been designed elsewhere. It is an exciting development and the funding is from the United Kingdom Department of Health. We already have staff who are training to design the vaccines. When there is an outbreak, we will quickly identify the micro-organisms and go on to attempt to design a vaccine and we want to use the self-amplifying RNA Vaccine technology which is one of those designs of vaccines that is more recent and new and we are working with our colleagues in the UK and in other places to ensure that the technology is introduced, explained Prof. Pontiano Kaleebu.
Prof. Pontiano added;
We have (UVRI) chosen to start with the Rift Valley Virus because there are a lot of outbreaks of rift valley virus in animals and in humans. Rift Valley Virus is a problem in the region and our goal as UVRI is to ensure that our programs address infections that are of importance in our local communities. Our plan is, after designing the vaccines we shall move towards pre-clinical testing in the Labs and thereafter we shall test the vaccine in the small animals and if we get additional funding and the product is working very well we shall move towards bigger animal studies and later into humans.
UVRI Undertakes Studies On Yellow Fever Vaccine.
The Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) is also currently undertaking a study on yellow fever, the Non-Inferiority Fractional Trials for Yellow Fever Vaccine (NIFTY) study.
Prof. Julius Lutwama, UVRI’s Deputy Managing Director and head of Department Arbovirology (emerging and re-emerging viruses) had this to say about the NIFTY Study.
The Non-Inferiority Fractional Trials for Yellow Fever Vaccine (NIFTY) study is a yellow fever partial dose study which is being carried out between Kenya and Uganda among adults and Children and the whole idea is to find out whether using a partial dose we can elicit the same kind of antibody response that is protective against yellow fever virus even when one uses parts or small doses of the normal amount of the yellow fever vaccine. This is because in the last couple of years there has been big outbreaks of yellow fever on the African continent but also in South America which led to stock pile of Yellow Fever Vaccine to be depleted and there was need to quickly produce more vaccines but also to see how if there are outbreaks of Yellow fever that if one uses a partial dose, one can quickly get the necessary number of doses, Prof. Lutwama explained.
He continued;
At the beginning 580 adults in Uganda and 580 adults in Kenya are going to be vaccinated while 530 Children in Kenya and 528 children in Uganda will be involved in the study. Our work at UVRI is only to do the testing and most of the work will be done by the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) in Kampala. There will be three sites where they will be enrolling people and will be enrolling children and blood samples will be collected at the beginning of the study when the person has been enrolled.
According to Prof. Lutwama, Uganda hasn’t registered any Yellow fever outbreak since 2016.
