The concept of “tailor-made”, protein-based, outer membrane vesicle vaccines against meningococcal disease

Protein-based, outer membrane vesicle (OMV) vaccines have previously proven to be efficacious against serogroup B meningococcal disease in Norway and Cuba. Currently, a public health intervention is going on in order to control a serogroup B epidemic in New Zealand. The scale-up and standardization of vaccine production required for controlling the New Zealand epidemic has allowed the establishment of large-scale GMP manufacturing for OMV vaccines. The outcome of this will be licensing of the vaccine in New Zealand and possibly other countries. The availability of licensed OMV vaccines raises the question of whether such vaccines may provide the opportunity to control other outbreaks and epidemics. For instance, such a vaccine could control a localised outbreak of group B meningococci in Normandy, France. “Tailor-made” vaccines, focusing on the sub-capsular antigens may also be considered for use in sub-Saharan Africa for the prevention of the recurrent outbreaks by serogroups A and W135 meningococci. This assumption is based on the epidemiological observation that meningococcal outbreaks in Africa are clonal and are strikingly stable regarding their phenotypic characteristics.