Researchers are working on a vaccine against stomach ulcers 

The Center for Vaccine Research (CVR) at SSI is hosting a progress meeting for the Vax2muc collaboration this week with 28 participants from eight countries.

The constant increase in antimicrobial-resistant bacteria has a significant impact on global public health, increasing the need to devise new strategies for preventing and treating bacterial infections.
The purpose of Vax2muc is to develop next-generation vaccines to prevent infections on the mucosal membrane in the intestinal tract. The first goal is infections caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which causes stomach ulcers.

”H. pylori is the most common chronic bacterial infection affecting half of the world’s population with a high risk of developing into stomach cancer. As with other bacteria in the intestinal system, antimicrobial resistance is an increasing problem with H. pylori and, thus, it is crucial to develop a vaccine”, says Gregers Jungersen, research professor from the Department of Infectious Immunology at CVR.

However, it is difficult to develop a vaccine to protect against bacteria in the mucosal membranes because the necessary local immunity at the mucosal surface is not created after normal vaccination. Therefore, the development of a new vaccine technology is required which, in the long term, can also be used against other infections in the intestinal tract.
SSI participates both in the long-term research of the development of new vaccines for intestinal tract infections, and in the production of the H. pylori vaccine itself.

”The first part of the project has been dedicated to designing the vaccine based on research results from the Technical University of Munich. From now on, the trial vaccine will be GMP produced for clinical testing in humans”, says Charlotte Green Jensen, Head of Vaccine Development at CVR.

Vax2muc is funded by the EU Horizon2020 research and innovation programme and runs for five years until June 2028. The project has a total budget of approx. EUR 8.5 mill., of which SSI receives approx. EUR 3 mill.

The annual meeting will take place on March 13-14 at Jernesalen at SSI, where results will be presented and further progress will be discussed.