Even as other researchers grope in the dark for an answer to treat the disease which was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organisation, Bharat Biotech International Limited- a Hyderabad based firm- has made a giant leap ahead of all of them and successfully developed the vaccine already.
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“We have two ZikaVac candidates in development”.
The infection of the virus is spread by Aedes mosquito during daytime and can be sexually transmitted to another person.
“Now we’ve basically mastered this process … we could get up to the stage (with Zika) where we are at with Chikungunya, which is basically generating a viral vaccine candidate that has been through all the pre-clinical testing that is required before we go off to a contract manufacturer by the end of this year”. There is an alarming association between Zika infections and severe birth defects, including over 4000 cases of microcephaly in Brazil since fall 2015, 270 of which show confirmed evidence of infection. The company claimed that their attempts and experience in creating a possible dengue fever vaccine will give them vital clues in developing the Zika vaccine.
Currently, the vaccine maker is focusing towards scale up and characterization of the vaccine product, the company’s CMD Krishna Ella further said. This comes close on the heels of an announcement yesterday by a French company, Sanofi Pasteur, about the launch of vaccine research and development project to target the Zika virus.
Robert McNally, PhD, GeoVax’s President and CEO, commented, “We believe our MVA-VLP vaccine platform is uniquely suited to apply to the Zika virus”. The vaccine methods developed early on, before the devastating consequences of the epidemics in Brazil came to light provided us a push to accelerate vaccine development, Dr Sumathy, director R&D Bharat Biotech said. His extensive experience and expertise with Flavivirus vaccine development gives the company an advantage over competitors and will shorten the time until a Zika vaccine can be brought to market by GeoVax and its partners.
“We have just been informed about the Zika vaccine candidate that Bharat Biotech has”.
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The multidimensional Innovation-oriented biotechnology company Bharat Biotech has supplied over 3 billion+ doses of vaccines to over 65 countries to tackle infectious and neglected diseases in both children and adults.
