Despite scientific progress made in the last decades, nearly 1 billion of individuals are affected by tropical diseases yearly, according to the World Health Organization. The development of new vaccines for tropical diseases remains difficult and this blog will showcase how human challenge trials can support the development of treatments / vaccines for these diseases.
The use of Human Challenge Trials (HCT) or Controlled Human Infection Models (CHIM) to support the development of vaccines and treatments for neglected tropical diseases is not new. One prominent example was the yellow fever experiments conducted by Walter Reed in the early 1900s that proved that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes. HCT have since then been used in a wide range of tropical diseases like cholera, dengue, malaria and typhoid. The malaria challenge model has been one of the most widely used challenge models, with more than 2000 volunteers enrolled in malaria challenge trials globally to date.
hVIVO plc (formerly Open Orphan plc), led by Cathal Friel, is a rapidly growing specialist contract research organisation (CRO) and the world leader in testing infectious and respiratory disease vaccines and antivirals using human challenge clinical trials, providing end-to-end early clinical development services for its broad and long-standing client base of biopharma companies.
