Immune response to Pneumococcal vaccination in older people
Research type
Research Study
Full title
MRC-IAA – Characterising the immune response to Pneumococcal vaccination in older people to inform a clinical trial assessing whether granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) can augment vaccine efficacy
IRAS ID
353508
Contact name
John Simpson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 9 months, 30 days
Research summary
Lung infections such as pneumonia, flu and COVID are a major cause of death worldwide, particularly in older people. Vaccines are available and reduce the impact of these lung infections. However older people have a less good immune response to vaccines. An unacceptable number of older people still die from lung infections even after receiving vaccines. It would be useful if we had vaccine “boosters” for older people that help the immune system respond better to vaccines. However, use of such boosters would first require clinical trials to be done, showing they work and are safe.
There are potential vaccine boosters available, one of which is called GM-CSF. In future we would like to perform a clinical trial to determine if GM-CSF can boost the response of the pneumonia vaccine (called Pneumovax) in older people. However, we first need to to work out exactly how many participants we would need in such a trial to prove whether GM-CSF safely boosts the response to Pneumovax. We therefore need to do a preliminary study that gives us more information about how the immune system works in older people who receive Pneumovax (without GM-CSF), to plan our clinical trial.
This study will therefore make a detailed assessment of the immune response to Pneumovax in older people receiving it as part of routine care. We shall take blood and (from a small proportion of people) lung fluid from volunteers. We shall measure the immune response in the blood and in the lung. We shall take some blood and lung cells to the laboratory and see if the immune response is boosted when we add GM-CSF there (volunteers will not receive GM-CSF in this study). The results will give us the information needed to plan our subsequent clinical trial.
REC name
South Central - Hampshire B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/SC/0122
Date of REC Opinion
22 May 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion