Conference Abstract | Volume 8, Abstract ELIC2025130 (Poster 027) | Published: 30 Jul 2025
Babatunde Isaac Ademusire1,2, Karolina Wieczorek2,3, Aishat Temitope Alonge1,2, Anuska Rajen2,3, Joanne Egbe1,2, Deborah Adebambo1,2, Chiamaka Bianca Offorbuike1,2, Filip Trojan4, Zofia Przypaśniak3, Ifeoluwa Oluwasegun Oduguwa1,2, Oluwaferanmi Omodeleola Omitoyin1,2,& , Toluwalogo Grace Balogun1,2
1College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, 2Polygeia (Global Health Student Think Tank), Ibadan Branch, Ibadan, Nigeria, 3Queen Mary University of London Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, London, United Kingdom, 4University College London, Medical School, London, United Kingdom
&Corresponding author: Oluwaferanmi Omodeleola Omitoyin, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, Email: oluwaferanmiomitoyin@gmail.com
Received: 30 Mar 2025, Accepted: 09 Jul 2025, Published: 30 Jul 2025
Domain: Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Keywords: Lassa fever, clinical trials, innovation, vaccine
©Babatunde Isaac Ademusire et al. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health (ISSN: 2664-2824). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Cite this article: Babatunde Isaac Ademusire et al., Prospects of Lassa fever candidate vaccines. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health. 2025;8(ConfProc5):00171. https://doi.org/10.37432/JIEPH-CONFPRO5-00171
Lassa fever is an acute viral haemorrhagic disease caused by the Lassa virus (LASV). It is endemic in West Africa and infects about 300,000 people each year, leading to approximately 5000 deaths annually. The development of the LASV vaccine has been listed as a priority by the World Health Organization since 2018. Considering the accelerated development and availability of vaccines against COVID-19, we set out to assess the prospects of LASV vaccines and the progress made so far.
We reviewed the progress made on twenty-six vaccine candidates listed by Salami et al. (2019) and searched for new vaccine candidates through Google Scholar, PubMed, and DOAJ from June to July 2021. We searched the articles published in English using keywords that included “vaccine” and “Lassa fever” or “Lassa virus” in the title/abstract.
Thirty-four candidate vaccines were identified – 26 already listed in the review by Salami et al. and an additional 8, which were developed over the last seven years. Thirty (30) vaccines are still in the pre-clinical stage, while 4 of them are currently undergoing clinical trials. The most promising candidates in 2019 were vesicular stomatitis virus-vectored vaccine and live-attenuated MV/LASV vaccine; both had progressed to clinical trials.
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