During the 1st project period, the consortium assembled the Scientific Advisory Group and Ethics Advisory Board to provide scientific oversight, and developed overall project management, data management, and monitoring and evaluation plans.
During the 1st and 2nd project periods, the VASA consortium completed four critical studies on schistosomiasis—a female worm schistosome human challenge study led by LUMC, a cost-of-illness study led by the IVI, a sero-epidemiology study in Burkina Faso led by the U of Ouagadougou, and a sero-epidemiology study in Madagascar led by the U of Antananarivo. The sero-epidemiology and COI studies in the two schistosomiasis-endemic countries produced comprehensive data on disease burden and the true cost of disease on individuals and health systems. Preliminary analyses of the sero-epidemiology data have yielded valuable insights into age-of-infection, burden in rural versus urban communities, and risk factors. We expect that the results from these studies will be of great value to regional disease control programs, health policy makers, and other researchers. Manuscripts of study results are currently in development, and will be submitted for peer-review to open-access journals. Further, the results from the female worm schistosome human challenge study made significant advances in understanding the complex immunogenicity of schistosomiasis infection in humans. These results are now published in eBioMedicine (Koopman JPR et al., eBioMedicine, 2023).
The VASA consortium has also been active in the greater research and public health community. Together with the International Institute of Science and Technology of Burkina Faso, the VASA consortium organised an international symposium on neglected tropical diseases in November 2022. VASA partners presented preliminary results from the sero-epidemiology and COI studies to a diverse audience of researchers and stakeholders from the region.
During the most recent project period, the VASA consortium successfully initiated the Phase 1b clinical study of Sm-p80+GLA-SE vaccine in healthy adults in Burkina Faso and in Madagascar. This trial marks the first clinical study of the vaccine candidate in schistosomiasis endemic populations, and will assess safety and immunogenicity. The trial began study recruitment in Madagascar in November 2023 and in Burkina Faso in March 2024. Other non-clinical VASA studies continued in this project period, namely the schistosomiasis vaccine cost-effectiveness analysis, led by the IVI, and the immune signatures identification study led by the TTUHSC. These work packages carried out preparatory activities, and we expect to see further progress in the next period as samples and data become available. Once results are ready, we will follow the dissemination plan, including but not limited to presenting at stakeholder meetings, publishing peer-reviewed literature, and approaching country policy makers.
