Lassa fever is a hemorrhagic fever caused by the Lassa virus that commonly spreads to humans in Africa from the rodent Mastomys natalensis. Symptoms include fever, weakness, headaches, muscle pain and bleeding from the mouth or gastrointestinal tract. Once infected, the risk of death is about 1% and frequently occurs within two weeks of the onset of symptoms. Among those who survive about 25% experience deafness.
There is no vaccine against Lassa virus. Medigen licensed reassortant virus vaccine technology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. The vaccine has been shown to protect mice, guinea pigs and non-human primates including protection from various genotypes of Lassa virus. Our vaccine is the only known vaccine that protects against at least three natural genotypes of Lassa virus. Safety “by design” of Lassa vaccine was confirmed in multiple preclinical studies including SIV-infected rhesus macaques, which is a remarkable safety for live vaccine virus demonstrating advantage over other known experimental vaccines for Lassa fever. Medigen is planning to expedite clinical development of Lassa vaccine and collaborates with the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), University of Maryland (Baltimore, MD), University of Louisville (Louisville, KY), and Texas Biomedical Institute (San Antonio, TX) on Lassa vaccine development.
Publications:
Lukashevich IS, Pushko P. Vaccine platforms to control Lassa fever. Expert Rev Vaccines. 2016 Sep;15(9):1135-50.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov /pubmed/27136941
Goicochea MA1, Zapata JC, Bryant J, Davis H, Salvato MS, Lukashevich IS. Evaluation of Lassa virus vaccine immunogenicity in a CBA/J-ML29 mouse model. Vaccine. 2012 Feb 14;30(8):1445-52.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov /pubmed/22234266