Ahmedabad: Gujarat headquartered Zydus Lifesciences Limited today announced it will develop a combination vaccine against shigellosis and typhoid. This combination vaccine is being developed for the first time in the world.

Zydus in a statement stated it will carry out early-stage development, animal immunogenicity studies and regulatory preclinical toxicology studies for this combination vaccine. The project is expected to get underway in March 2025, and is being supported by the Gates Foundation. Zydus will collaborate with a partner for the research and co-development of a combination vaccine using Zydus’ WHO prequalified Typhoid conjugate vaccine (ZyVacTM TCV) and Shigella Vaccine from Zydus’ partner.

The TCV-Shigella combination vaccine aims to protect children below 5 years against shigellosis, a diarrhoeal disease caused by the Shigella bacteria and typhoid fever, caused by salmonella bacteria in areas where both the diseases are endemic. This combination of vaccines, if found successful, will safeguard children against two lethal enteric diseases of global relevance and potentially offer a viable solution in a scenario where childhood immunization schedules are becoming increasingly crowded, expensive, and unsustainable, said the company in its statement.

Typhoid is already a disease of concern globally and various endemic countries already have TCV as part of their national immunization plan. GAVI board also approved a learning agenda on vaccination against shigella for 2026 to 2030 immunization strategy. An estimated 11–21 million cases of typhoid fever and 5 million cases of paratyphoid fever occur worldwide each year, causing an estimated 135,000–230,000 deaths. Shigella was the second-leading cause of diarrhoeal mortality in 2016 among all ages, and the leading bacterial cause of diarrhoea, accounting for approximately 212 000 deaths and about 13% of all diarrhoea- associated deaths. Recently in Dec’24 WHO has published the global priority endemic pathogens for vaccine research and development (R&D) where Shigella is pathogen of concern for Africa, American, Eastern Mediterranean, European, and Southeast Asian regions. DeshGujarat