Crucell West Nile vaccine demonstrates safety

The vaccine is developed using Crucell’s PER.C6 technology, a cell line developed for the large-scale manufacture of biopharmaceutical products, including vaccines.

Three different dosages of the vaccine were tested in the study. The primary endpoint of the trial was the incidence of adverse events during the period of two months after the first intra-muscular administration of the vaccine. The vaccine was administered twice with a three-week interval. Administration of the vaccine was systemically and locally well tolerated.

“It is encouraging that the immune response observed in vaccinees, which was the secondary objective of the study, is in line with the observations in vaccinated geese,” said Dr Jaap Goudsmit, Crucell’s chief scientific officer.

The veterinary vaccine for geese, which produced excellent safety data and almost 100% efficacy in challenge experiments, protects against the Israel 1998 goose strain of West Nile virus, which is closely related to the New York 1999 strain responsible for the outbreaks in the US.