CEPI awards $5.2m funding for Nipah virus vaccine research

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has announced that it has granted $5.2 million in funding to Dr Anthony Griffiths, associate professor of microbiology at Boston University (BU), US to support the development of vaccines against the Nipah virus.

Griffiths and his team of scientists are working to understand the biology of emerging and re-emerging viruses and to deploy their knowledge to support the development of vaccines and therapies. 

Since 2017, CEPI has invested up to $100 million in four promising Nipah vaccine candidates, being developed by teams across academia and industry. CEPI’s overarching goal, as part of its plan to reduce or even eliminate future epidemics and pandemics threats, is to develop a licenced Nipah vaccine or additional medical countermeasure.

The new BU funding will be pivotal to supporting this ambition. Through this new partnership with CEPI, Griffiths will provide CEPI-supported Nipah vaccine developers with pre-clinical models to test their vaccine candidates that will allow vaccine developers to rapidly assess their candidates. It also allows CEPI and potential future vaccine regulators to be sure that the vaccine has been assessed in its early stages under rigorous quality standards.

“Nipah is an emerging zoonotic virus with a high fatality rate that is associated with sporadic outbreaks. However, this virus is thought to be a major concern for a future pandemic,” concluded Griffiths.