Research and development of Zika virus vaccine makes new progress

Hopes for developing a Zika virus vaccine have taken a step forward as Inovio Pharmaceuticals announced that testing on mice has shown positive results.

Illustration photo. (Source: Reuters)

In a statement on February 17, the US-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals Corporation said that when tested on mice, the vaccine promoted a positive antibody response. The company will continue testing the vaccine on primates as well as begin manufacturing the product for treatment applications.

The company plans to conduct phase 1 of a three-phase human trial before the end of 2016, which involves testing the experimental product on healthy volunteers, said company chairman Joseph Kim.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are at least 15 companies and expert groups researching and developing a vaccine against Zika.

In addition to Inovio, several organizations are also joining the fight against the dangerous virus currently raging in South America, including India's Bharat Biotech, France's Sanofi and the US National Institutes of Health. However, the WHO estimates that it will take at least 18 months before a Zika vaccine can be tested on a large scale in humans.

Inovio's vaccine is a collaboration with South Korean company GeneOne Life Sciences and several other partners.

Zika virus belongs to the Flaviviridae family of viruses and is transmitted by the Aedes mosquito. The most common symptoms of infection are fever, conjunctivitis, headache, muscle and joint pain, and rash. Currently, the medical community is focusing on determining the relationship between this virus and the phenomenon of newborns with abnormally small heads and brains and Guillain-Barre syndrome, which causes neurological paralysis and even death in newborns./.

According to VIETNAM+