title: Summary and Recommendations from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Workshop "Gonorrhea Vaccines: the Way Forward".
abstract: There is an urgent need for the development of an antigonococcal vaccine due to the increasing drug resistance found in this pathogen. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have identified multidrug-resistant gonococci (GC) as among 3 "urgent" hazard-level threats to the U.S.
  
  
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  In light of this, on 29 to 30 June 2015, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) sponsored a workshop entitled "Gonorrhea Vaccines: the Way Forward." The goal of the workshop was to gather leaders in the field to discuss several key questions on the current status of gonorrhea vaccine research and the path forward to a licensed gonorrhea vaccine. Representatives from academia, industry, U.S. Government agencies, and a state health department were in attendance. This review summarizes each of the 4 scientific sessions and a series of 4 breakout sessions that occurred during the one and a half days of the workshop. Topics raised as high priority for future development included (i) reinvigoration of basic research to understand gonococcal infection and immunity to allow intervention in processes essential for infection; (ii) clinical infection studies to establish parallels and distinctions between in vitro and animal infection models versus natural human genital and pharyngeal infection and to inform in silico modeling of vaccine impact; and (iii) development of an integrated pipeline for preclinical and early clinical evaluation and direct comparisons of potential vaccine antigens and adjuvants and routes of delivery.
authors.affiliation: Section of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA lwetzler@bu.edu.
authors.forename: Lee M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Wetzler
authors.affiliation: National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Ian M
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Feavers
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: Scott D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Gray-Owen
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
authors.forename: Ann E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Jerse
authors.affiliation: Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Peter A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Rice
authors.affiliation: Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, NIAID, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
authors.forename: Carolyn D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Deal
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001428:Bacterial Vaccines / Q000276:immunology* / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000639:trends; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000639:trends*; D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical / Q000379:methods; D004493:Education; D006069:Gonorrhea / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D054579:National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (U.S.); D014481:United States
chemical_list: D001428:Bacterial Vaccines