Developing a vaccine for all four dengue viruses
2013
Challenge
Each year, dengue viruses infect 50-100 million people and cause 500,000 hospitalizations worldwide External link. There are four distinct dengue viruses and, unfortunately, infection from one type does not provide long-term protection against the others. Instead, individuals can develop more severe symptoms upon infection by one of the other viruses. Thus, the ideal dengue vaccine would be tetravalent, i.e., offer protection against all four viruses.
Advance
In January 2013, IRP researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and their colleagues successfully completed a Phase I clinical trial of a group of NIAID-developed tetravalent vaccines and selected one candidate, called TV003, for a Phase II trial External link. In 90 percent of vaccine recipients, a single dose of TV003 induced immune responses against three or more dengue viruses.
Impact
The NIAID-developed dengue vaccine technology has been licensed by several companies in dengue-endemic regions of South America and Asia. Because it requires only a single dose, TV003 may offer a cost-effective approach to preventing dengue infections worldwide.
Publications
Durbin AP, Kirkpatrick BD, Pierce KK, Elwood D, Larsson CJ, Lindow JC, Tibery C, Sabundayo BP, Shaffer D, Talaat KR, Hynes NA, Wanionek K, Carmolli MP, Luke CJ, Murphy BR, Subbarao K, Whitehead SS. (2013). A single dose of any of four different live attenuated tetravalent dengue vaccines is safe and immunogenic in flavivirus-naive adults: a randomized, double-blind clinical trial. J Infect Dis. 207(6), 957-65.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, June 20, 2023