Vaccine development for Zika virus goes on

Hyderabad-based vBharat Biotech has already completed pre-clinical studies on vaccine in animals and has sought government permission to begin human trials

The world Health Organisation(WHO) on Friday announced that Zika virus was no longer a public health emergency of international concern at the time when the vaccine manufacturers were in advances stages of clinical trials.

During the fifth meeting of the Emergency Committee, WHO director general Margaret Chan affirmed the end of a global health emergency but said that Zika virus remains a significant enduring public health challenge requiring intense action.

Hyderabad-based vaccine maker Bharat Biotech has already completed pre-clinical studies of Zika vaccine candidate in animals. It has sought government permission to begin human trials.

Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of French drug maker Sanofi, also started phase-I trials on the vaccine during this month.

In February 2016, soon after the WHO declared Zika infection as a public health emergency, Bharat Biotech unveiled two vaccine candidates-an inactivated and a recombinant vaccine to protect against Zika virus. It has also filed for a global patent for the vaccine candidate called ZikaVac.

Sanofi Pasteur is co-developing an inactivated vaccine to Zika virus in collaboration with Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, National Institute of Health and Fiocruz Foundation. It expects additional phase-I studies to initiate over the next few months. It will takeover testing of the vaccine following these phase-I studies and will advance the vaccine through late stage clinical studies.

The scientists of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have recently come out with a new mouse model that may help in exploring the impact of Zika virus vaccines and therapeutics. Sanofi Pasteur believes that there are significant differences between mouse models and human infections. Therefore, it has moved quickly to advance vaccine into human clinical trials to directly assess the vaccine performance

According to Sanofi Pasteur spokesperson, the company was working with many partners across the world to license Zika vaccine as soon as possible. It has invested heavily towards rapid development of this vaccine. The US Government has also committed $ 43.2 million to fund the phase-II development of the vaccine.