Testing a 24-valent pneumococcal investigational vaccine in older adults aged 65 to 85 years: safety, reactogenicity, and immunogenicity. A plain language summary of two publications

Plain Language SummaryWhat is the topic?Pneumococcus is a bacteria that can cause severe diseases. There are many types of pneumococcus, called ‘serotypes’. Licensed pneumococcal vaccines help protect against some serotypes. However, some vulnerable people (young children, older adults, people with weakened immunity) still get severe pneumococcal disease. This is partly because some of the serotypes are not included in the licensed vaccines and some are difficult for the vaccines to protect against.To try to improve protection against pneumococcus, researchers used MAPS technology (a way of making vaccines) to develop Pn-MAPS24v, a pneumococcal vaccine aimed against 24 serotypes.What was done in the studies?This summary describes two clinical studies comparing Pn-MAPS24v with licensed pneumococcal vaccines in adults and older adults (65 years and above) from the US and Japan.The researchers looked at how safe Pn-MAPS24v was and how well it helped produce immune responses against the vaccine serotypes. This summary focuses on older adults.What were the results and what do they mean?Pn-MAPS24v had a safety profile similar to the tested licensed vaccines. Pn-MAPS24v led to immune responses that were similar to the licensed vaccines for serotypes included in all the tested vaccines, and higher immune responses for serotypes included only in Pn-MAPS24v. These results mean that research on pneumococcal vaccines using MAPS technology should continue.