Polio Research Committee reviews ongoing activities; endorses new research studies
The third meeting of the Polio Research Committee (PRC) convened in Geneva, Switzerland on 2–3 June 2009. Discussions focused on various ongoing and proposed research topics relating to both the pre- and post-eradication era. Reviewed research topics included:
- addressing compromised oral polio vaccine (OPV) efficacy (e.g. zinc supplementation to improve OPV efficacy; zinc has been shown to be associated with a reduction of diarrhoeal disease)
- developing ‘affordable’ inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) options (e.g. IPV production from non-infectious seed strains, adjuvants and Sabin-IPV development)
- use of IPV in northern India to fill residual immunity gaps among very young children and enhancing surveillance for acute flaccid paralysis (AFP).
In its deliberations, the PRC endorsed the following external research proposals for funding:
- Antiviral drug development: The proposal is to identify new antiviral compounds against polioviruses through industrial-scale mass screening of compounds and evaluation of candidate compounds in vitro and in mouse models.
- Assessment of alternate polio strains for vaccine production: This project will create efficient poliovirus packaging cell lines and produce encapsidated poliovirus replicons as seed material for IPV production. Those replicons lack the capsid encoding genome segment, and are therefore unable to form virus particles. Additionally, replicons are considered to be identical in antigenicity, stability and biophysical properties to wild polio virus.
- Impact of zinc supplementation on OPV efficacy: This proposal will investigate whether low zinc status in infants contributes to diminished immune response to OPV; and, evaluate the impact of zinc supplementation among infants on immune response to OPV.
The next PRC meeting is scheduled for 10–11 November in Geneva, and will focus on pre-eradication issues, low vaccine efficacy and risk factors contributing to low vaccination coverage.