Welcome to Poliopolis: An nOPV2 clinical trial

How a container village in Belgium is helping us test new polio vaccines.

Poliopolis is a 66-unit container village built by the University of Antwerp, Belgium, to house a polio vaccine clinical trial. © Ananda Bandyopadhyay / Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Welcome to Poliopolis! You’ll spend the next 28 days in a container village to help us test a new polio vaccine. Poliopolis is equipped with all the amenities to make your stay comfortable: air-conditioned private rooms with workstations and sinks, a lounge area with a flat screen TV and foosball table, a fitness room with a variety of exercise equipment, and a bright, sunny dining area. Enjoy your stay!

Sounds like a scene from a science fiction story, right? But this is a real polio vaccine trial that took place in a parking lot at the University of Antwerp, Belgium in mid-2017. The study, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, evaluated two novel oral polio vaccine candidates. These vaccine candidates were developed by scientists from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s polio laboratory, the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in the United Kingdom, and the University of California, in San Francisco, with support from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Once fully developed and tested, these new, more genetically-stable, live, attenuated vaccines will prove a critical resource to ensure global polio eradication.

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Welcome to Poliopolis