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.
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The experiment involved a traditional vaccine and two more cutting-edge ones.
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Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is helping Florida contain its infected mosquitoes, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is trying to better understand Zika and help develop vaccines and treatments, have borrowed money from other parts of their budgets to keep working at full speed. NIAID worked expeditiously to ready a vaccine candidate and results in animal testing have been very encouraging. “However, I think we saw an example with Ebola, that if it’s a public health crisis we’re able to really compress those timelines and get the vaccine out sooner”.
SCIENTISTS are a step closer to a vaccine for the Zika virus after three promising candidates were successfully tested in monkeys. The second contains DNA from Zika woven into a small, harmless circle of DNA called a plasmid; once in cells, this DNA produces Zika proteins that spark an immune response against them.
Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said clinical trials on a vaccine for the virus may be delayed because the National Institutes of Health will run out of these repurposed funds by the end of this month.
The Obama administration has been siphoning money dedicated to other health issues to provide stopgap funding for Zika efforts but said on Wednesday that most will be gone in the coming weeks.
Nelson’s state has become the epicenter for Zika in the U.S. Fifteen people are reported to be infected with the virus in Miami’s Wynwood arts district.
After their first injection, participants of the study will return to check-ups for the next 44 weeks to evaluate their health and the vaccine’s effectiveness. Furthermore, the DoD confirmed that 33 USA troops, including one pregnant woman, were infected with Zika outside of the United States.
Both the NIH and Inovio vaccines are DNA vaccines, which unlike traditional vaccines that use deactivated or weakend viruses, or proteins from the virus created to prompt an immune response, use genetic material derived from the viruses’ key proteins to stimulate the immune system.
The first phase of testing of the vaccine on humans is expected to start in October.
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Scientists hope to start early trials in humans to find out if these vaccines are safe for use. The host body will pick up the DNA from the pathogen and begin to formulate an immune response. If the first trial happens to be successful, a phase 2 trial will take place in January 2017.
