LJMU students help the global fight against pneumonia

The Liverpool Vaccine Group work to improve pneumonia vaccination and are currently recruiting healthy volunteers to test pneumonia vaccines to investigate how they provide protection against a bacteria called pneumococcus, which can commonly cause pneumonia. 

Dr Andrea Collins, the ARC Director explained the importance of these studies, “Traditional vaccine trials can take years to complete, recruiting thousands of volunteers and monitoring who develops disease. The Liverpool Vaccine Group have developed a human challenge model that reduces the time, cost and number of volunteers needed to test vaccines. This means that safe effective vaccines can be licenced more quickly, saving lives globally due to the reduced cost and getting the best vaccine to the people that need them.” 

The team are currently recruiting to the Pneumo 2 study which began in July 2021 and will run until December 2022, recruiting around 500 healthy adults, aged 18-50 years old. Volunteers will be invited to attend up to 15 visits in the clinic over a period of eight months and will be paid for their time.  

Joseph Cleworth, a 2nd Year Biochemistry student at Liverpool John Moores University, signed up for the trial when he was handed a leaflet by LSTM staff. He said “In school I learned a bit about trials and wanted to see it in person. As a Biochemist it’s interesting to know more about medical research. I’m not going to lie, the money was a draw too.” 

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine is always recruiting more volunteers to take part in our pneumonia studies, volunteers will be paid for their time.  

To take part in the study you need to be: 

• 18 -50 years old (inclusive) 

• Not pregnant or planning on becoming pregnant during the study 

• A non-smoker 

• Generally, well 

Angie Hyder-Wright, the ARC Manager added, “We are really grateful to our amazing volunteers in Liverpool, without these volunteers, we would not be able to advance vaccines in our fight against Pneumonia. We encourage people to register for more information to find out about current and future research opportunities.” 

Could you help in the fight against pneumonia? 

You can register for more information about the study and find out about being a volunteer here: www.lstmed.ac.uk/arc-volunteer-database  

Email: 2volresearch@lstmed.ac.uk