Can animal models predict protection provided by meningococcal vaccines?

Animal infection models are valuable for the development and assessment of meningococcal vaccines because interactions of the organism with the entire immune system can be assessed. There is no ideal animal disease model that mimics the course of human disease but the two most widely used are intraperitoneal (IP) infection of adult mice or infant rats. Recent developments using transgenic mice expressing human CD46 give hope that improved models will be developed that better predict vaccine efficacy.

Section editors:Enitan Carrol – Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research, Blantyre and Liverpool, Malawi and UKAndrew Riordan – Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, Birmingham, UK