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TropIKA.net Partnerships

Towards a dengue vaccine: another candidate enters trials

2 Feb 2010

Paul Chinnock

Source: TropIKA.net

A trial is now under way in the United States of a new potential vaccine that it is hoped will protect against dengue fever.

Dengue – a mosquito-borne viral disease – is becoming more common across the tropical world. Annual case numbers now exceed 50 million. There is no specific treatment and no vaccine. However, as vaccines have been developed against related viruses (yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis and tick-borne encephalitis), it is thought to be feasible to produce an effective dengue vaccine.

Australian vaccine manufacturer Acuvax has announced that its US subsidiary Hawaii Biotech has begun a Phase 1 study of a new vaccine candidate at the St Louis University (SLU) Center for Vaccine Development.

The trial is a double-blind, placebo-controlled, dose-escalation safety study in healthy subjects. Patients enrolled in the study will also, however, be monitored for their development of virus-neutralising antibodies in response to the vaccine.

The monovalent vaccine, is based on recombinant DNA technology. Hawaii Biotech has received funding for its dengue fever programme from the US National Institutes for Health and the Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative (PDVI). The US Army has also contributed resources. (More details in press release from SLU and report from BioTechnologyNews.net).

The news of the trial comes less than a month after publication [1] of encouraging results from a safety and immunogenicity trial, involving 66 healthy patients, of a tetravalent vaccine developed by Sanofi-Aventis.

Further candidate vaccines are also under development; PDVI currently maintains a portfolio of five candidates being developed by seven different organizations.

Reference

1. Morrison D, Legg TJ, Billings CW, Forrat R, Yoksan S, Lang J (2010). A novel tetravalent dengue vaccine is well tolerated and immunogenic against all 4 serotypes in flavivirus-naive adults. J Infect Dis; 201(3):370-377. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20059357

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