Hopes of new meningitis vaccine

A SOUTHAMPTON professor gave his inaugural lecture on meningococcal meningitis this week less than a month after three first-years at the university died of the disease. John Heckels, professor of molecular microbiology, described the university's work on vaccines to combat different strains in the past ten years. He is hopeful that work to identify the structure of proteins in the B strain, which are important for inducing immunity, may produce an effective vaccine in the next five years.

He says preliminary trials on a B vaccine have been encouraging.