Quadrivalent meningococcal vaccination of adults: phase III comparison of an investigational conjugate vaccine, MenACWY-CRM, with the licensed vaccine, Menactra.

Neisseria meningitidis is a leading cause of bacterial meningitis in the United States, with the highest case fatality rates reported for individuals > or = 15 years of age. This study compares the safety and immunogenicity of the Novartis Vaccines investigational quadrivalent meningococcal CRM(197) conjugate vaccine, MenACWY-CRM, to those of the licensed meningococcal conjugate vaccine, Menactra, when administered to healthy adults. In this phase III multicenter study, 1,359 adults 19 to 55 years of age were randomly assigned to one of four groups (1:1:1:1 ratio) to receive a single dose of one of three lots of MenACWY-CRM or a single dose of Menactra. Serum samples obtained at baseline and 1 month postvaccination were tested for serogroup-specific serum bactericidal activity using human complement (hSBA). The hSBA titers following vaccination with MenACWY-CRM and Menactra were compared in noninferiority and prespecified superiority analyses. Reactogenicity was similar in the MenACWY-CRM and Menactra groups, and neither vaccine was associated with a serious adverse event. When compared with Menactra, MenACWY-CRM met the superiority criteria for the proportions of recipients achieving a seroresponse against serogroups C, W-135, and Y and the proportion of subjects achieving postvaccination titers of > or = 1:8 for serogroups C and Y. MenACWY-CRM's immunogenicity was statistically noninferior (the lower limit of the two-sided 95% confidence interval was more than -10%) to that of Menactra for all four serogroups, with the postvaccination hSBA geometric mean titers being consistently higher for MenACWY-CRM than for Menactra. MenACWY-CRM is well tolerated in adults 19 to 55 years of age, with immune responses to each of the serogroups noninferior and, in some cases, statistically superior to those to Menactra.