7 July 2014
Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics regularly publishes Special Features on topics of broad interest.
Our May issue featured four commentaries on pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV). Two of these commentaries (link to Fedson, link to Hollingsworth) addressed general aspects of clinical protection in older subjects following PCV vaccination. The other two of these commentaries (link to Shapiro, link to Musher) discussed clinical protection as well as the recent very large Phase 3 CAPITA clinical trial, which showed that the leading PCV (Prevnar, Pfizer) elicits protection against pneumococcal pneumonia and invasive pneumococcal disease caused by vaccine serotypes in elderly subjects. It should be noted that the latter commentaries were based on top-line results in a presentation at an international conference and not on the full set of clinical data, which will not be publically available until after the publication of the clinical research article on the CAPITA trial.
Pfizer would like to write their own commentary in HV&I on this CAPITA trial, which they can do fully only after their original clinical research article on CAPITA has been accepted for publication.
Ronald Ellis PhD
Editor-in-Chief