The study used three different vaccines to successfully immunize monkeys.
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Fauci said the DNA method makes it easy to provide the vaccine quickly.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is expected to exhaust its $47 million in Zika vaccine funding by the end of August, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell warned in a letter to Capitol Hill this week.
As the serious threat of Zika continues to grow, researchers are frantically developing a vaccine to aid in stopping the disease. This week, USA officials announced that a number of people in the state of Florida have been infected. In the trial, the vaccine will be tested on at least 80 healthy participants between the ages of 18 and 35, who will be randomly divided into four groups of 20. No adverse side effects were observed in any of the animals. People infected while traveling can also transmit the virus to their sex partners back home. Laboratory studies also confirmed the presence of Zika virus in the blood, tissue, brains and amniotic fluid of fetuses and babies diagnosed with microcephaly.
The need for a vaccine to fight against Zika infection has intensified and become urgent with the rapid spread of the virus throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Brazil – the host country for the 2016 Summer Olympics that begin Friday – has had the vast majority of both Zika infections and microcephaly cases.
With Zika now being transmitted by mosquitoes in the continental United States, and Rio having too many issues to count, even on top of their months-long outbreak, it’s been a pretty scary time for those living in affected areas. As of Tuesday, Florida health officials said that 15 people had been infected.
The CDC advises pregnant women not to travel to an area where active Zika transmission is ongoing, and to use insect repellent and wear long trousers and long-sleeved shirts if they are in those areas.
“It’s not going to be this year, for sure”, Barouch said.
“The development of a safe and effective vaccine is therefore an important priority”.
Efforts to develop a vaccine began after a massive Zika outbreak a year ago in Brazil, which showed that infection of pregnant women can harm fetal brain development. It’s a standard way to create a vaccine.
A news article in Science explains the three promising vaccines: “One is a traditional vaccine that uses a whole killed Zika virus”.
Army researchers at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), in collaboration with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, showed that a Zika inactivated purified virus (ZIPV) provided a robust immune response, with all eight monkeys showing Zika-specific neutralizing antibodies 2 weeks after the first dose (a second dose was given at week 4).
But he called the results “very significant”.
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Those trials will be larger studies, involving more volunteers.
