PERISCOPE project presented at Congress on Clinical Trials in Infection

The conference “Clinical Trials in Infectious Disease - From Diagnosis to Clinic (CTIDC2018)” premiered in London, UK from July 02-03 2018.

CTICD2018 was targeted at scientists and clinicians in the field of Infection, pharmaceutical, biomedical and medical device industries, clinical research organisations and research networks. The conference was attended by professionals conducting clinical trials relating to infectious disease therapy, diagnosis and prevention by vaccination.

The event was developed in association with the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) which is one of the main funders of clinical research in the UK National Health Service (NHS).

Day two of the conference was of high relevance for PERISCOPE: Consortium partner Prof. Dr Andrew Gorringe from the Department of Health (Public Health England/ PHE) presented the project and some new data from the human challenge model in his talk on “Clinical Studies to Determine Immune Correlates of Protection for Pertussis”. In addition, insightful presentations on the challenges of clinical trials in infectious diseases were given by Sarah Pett (University College London) and Tim Peto (University of Oxford). Peter Openshaw (Imperial College, London) updated the audience on studies on influenza, including the use of human challenge models. Prior to the presentation on PERISCOPE, Matthew Snape (University of Oxford) gave an overview of the work of the Oxford Vaccine Group and the importance of immune correlates of protection. Philip Cruz (GSK) then provided the industry perspective on vaccine development.

PERISCOPE is one the most comprehensive programmes of work that seeks to use clinical trials to understand correlates of protection that can then be used as a pathway to new pertussis vaccines. The CTIDC2018 audience included several investigators who performed human challenge studies for other pathogens which was of particular interest. The combination of a human challenge model and trials comparing the whole cell and acellular vaccines was a highly powerful illustration of a consortium working together to develop new knowledge and stimulated an interesting discussion.

For more details, please visit: www.ctidc2018.com