The Liberian-U.S. Partnership for Research on Vaccines and Infectious Diseases in Liberia, was formed in 2014 at the height of the West African Ebola outbreak with the aim of accelerating the development of Ebola vaccines and therapeutics. To support Liberia’s research response to the outbreak, PREVAIL developed core clinical research capacities and infrastructure at clinical sites in urban and peri-urban areas as well as a research laboratory at the Liberia Institute for Biomedical Research (LIBR).
After being declared free from the Ebola virus in January 2016, Liberia identified the need for a research platform to support a rapid response to future epidemics and outbreaks. PREVAIL’s focus then shifted from emergency response mode to the establishment of a program capable of supporting Liberia’s research response to diseases of public health importance. To date, PREVAIL has carried out more than 15 clinical research studies and findings from PREVAIL’s research efforts have been shared through almost 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at national, regional, and international conferences. These findings have contributed to scientific advances toward the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases and strategies for effective community engagement in clinical research.
Maintaining this research capacity is an important aspect of Liberian, West African, and international public health security given the number of global pandemic threats, many of them native to West Africa (e.g., Ebola virus, Lassa Fever, Yellow Fever, Marburg virus). The effort to maintain this capacity includes ongoing training and mentorship, technology transfer, development of policies and standard operating procedures, ensuring the uninterrupted functioning of clinical, laboratory, and biorepository infrastructure with an unstable power grid and, importantly, ongoing engagement with national partners and stakeholders.
Publications
SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in vaccine-naïve participants from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Liberia, and Mali, International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2024
Immunogenicity and Vaccine Shedding After 1 or 2 Doses of rVSVΔG-ZEBOV-GP Ebola Vaccine (ERVEBO®): Results From a Phase 2, Randomized, Placebo-controlled Trial in Children and Adults, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2024
Simplifying the estimation of diagnostic testing accuracy over time for high specificity tests in the absence of a gold standard, Biometrics, 2023
Randomized Trial of Vaccines for Zaire Ebola Virus Disease, New England Journal of Medicine, 2022
Clinical sequelae among individuals with pauci-symptomatic or asymptomatic Ebola virus infection and unrecognised Ebola virus disease in Liberia: a longitudinal cohort study, Lancet Infectious Diseases, 2022
PREVAIL IV: A Randomized, Double-Blind, 2-Phase, Phase 2 Trial of Remdesivir vs Placebo for Reduction of Ebola Virus RNA in the Semen of Male Survivors, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2021
The impact of the 2014 Ebola epidemic on HIV disease burden and outcomes in Liberia West Africa, PLoS One, 2021
Adult and paediatric haematology and clinical chemistry laboratory reference limits for Liberia, African Journal of Laboratory Medicine, 2020
Contact Information
For more information about PREVAIL and the Collaborative Clinical Research Branch (CCRB), please email CCRB_INFO@niaid.nih.gov.