Acceleration of the development of vaccines and diagnostics for typhoid fever using a human challenge model (360G-Wellcome-092661_Z_10_Z)

Typhoid is a serious infection which kills up to 600,000 people every year. Many children and adults are affected by the disease and it is the commonest bacterial cause of fever in children attending hospital in some parts of South Asia. It is very expensive to undertake the field studies that are needed to see if new vaccines work and this has stalled development of some new generation vaccines which might give better protection against typhoid. In this project a research team lead by Professor Andrew Pollard from Oxford University will use a model of infection in healthy volunteers to see if a new vaccine can prevent the disease. The researchers will also use the model to understand typhoid infection better and study which components of immunity are important in vaccine protection. The team will use the model to try to develop new blood or urine tests for better diagnosis of typhoid. It is hoped that these studies will improve case management and move vaccine development more quickly to eventually save lives.