Vaccine Development for Zika Virus—Timelines and Strategies

Development of a Zika vaccine.

Zika Virus: Immunity and Vaccine Development

The emergence of Zika virus in the Americas and Caribbean created an urgent need for vaccines to reduce transmission and prevent disease, particularly the devastating neurodevelopmental defects that occur in utero. Rapid advances in Zika immunity and the development of vaccine candidates provide cautious optimism that preventive measures are possible.

Recent Advances in Zika Virus Vaccine Development

Symbiosis Group Figure 1: Three different mechanisms of ADE (Antibody-dependent enhancement): A-receptors on virus particles bound by cross-reactive antibody get conformational change in structure that results in high affinity with the corresponding receptor on the host cell membrane. The corresponding receptor was not able to recognize the viral receptor before this conformational change. BThe...

Strategies for Cancer Vaccine Development

Treating cancer with vaccines has been a challenging field of investigation since the 1950s. Over the years, the lack of effective active immunotherapies has led to the development of numerous novel strategies. However, the use of therapeutic cancer vaccines may be on the verge of becoming an effective modality. Recent phase II/III clinical trials have achieved hopeful results in terms of overa...

Current trends in Zika vaccine development

The Zika virus (ZIKV) was first isolated in 1947 in Uganda. While it took 60 years for this virus to cause major outbreaks, an important shift in its ability to cause epidemics took place in the first and second decades of the this century: in 2007 in Yap Island, Micronesia, followed by French Polynesia in 2013 and, finally in 2015 and 2016, when ZIKV infections occurred throughout South Americ...