Prior to the study, there was no vaccine available against serogroup X of N. meningitidis. This bacterium has caused many outbreaks in Africa and Europe in recent past. It has been responsible for outbreaks between 2006 and 2010 in Kenya, Niger, Togo, Uganda, and Burkina Faso, the latter with at least 1,300 cases of serogroup X meningitis among the 6,732 reported annual cases. The WHO has expressed concerns over the lack of a serogroup X vaccine and has encouraged more research into it. As a result, Serum Institute of India Private Limited (SIIPL) has developed the candidate vaccine MCV-5 (currently renamed NmCV-5), which is a polyvalent conjugate vaccine composed of serogroups A, C, Y, W, and X of Neisseria meningitidis capsular polysaccharides, conjugated to protein carriers, CRM and tetanus toxoid, with aluminum phosphate as an adjuvant. It is intended for the prevention of meningitis and/or septicemia caused by serogroups A, C, Y, W, and X of N. meningitidis in countries where the disease is endemic and causes large epidemics, such as the countries in the African meningitis belt.~The three-group design of the study will allow safety evaluation of the adjuvanted and nonadjuvanted MCV-5 formulations. Menactra® has been chosen as the control vaccine, because of the large safety database accumulated since the vaccine has been introduced in the USA in 2005 and progressively in other countries
The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the safety of adjuvanted and non-adjuvanted formulations of MCV-5 vaccine. The secondary objective is to assess the immune response of adjuvanted and non-adjuvanted formulations of MCV-5 vaccine.