A new vaccine is being developed against whooping cough, which causes 200,000 preventable deaths in children around the world each year.
Researchers in Southampton are leading the UK arm of a Europe-wide study to create a replacement for the current vaccine, which does not offer lifelong protection and has become less effective over time.
The condition is a highly contagious bacterial infection of the lungs and airways caused by a bacterium called Bordetella pertussis.
It is spread through coughs and sneezes of someone with the infection.
It causes repeated coughing that can last for two to three months or more and affects mainly babies under the age of six months.
They are the group most vulnerable to severe and sometimes life-threatening respiratory and neurological complications that require hospital admission.
The infection affects 16 million people worldwide every year.
Adults suffer a milder form of the disease but can still have an unpleasant cough for up to three months.
The first symptoms are similar to those of a cold and intense coughing bouts start about a week later.
Professor Robert Read, director of the National Institute for Health Research Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, is leading the study to improve the vaccine testing and development.
It forms part of a wider European project, Periscope, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Innovative Medicines Initiative, involving experts from 22 institutions across 11 countries.
At the NIHR Southampton Clinical Research Facility, clinicians will inoculate healthy volunteers with nose drops containing B. pertussis and monitor their immune responses before giving them an antibiotic to clear the infection.