CHICAGO – Mice given a single shot of one of two
experimental Zika vaccines were completely protected when exposed to the virus
one to two months later, a promising
sign that similar vaccines under
development for humans will protect against Zika, U.S. researchers said on
Tuesday.
"This is an
encouraging first step in Zika vaccine design and pre-clinical testing. This
new mouse model should be useful for comparative assessments of the large range
of vaccine candidates now being designed," said Professor Adrian Hill,
director of Oxford University's Jenner Institute, which did not conduct the
mouse study but is also developing Zika vaccines.
Separately, U.S.
scientists said they have developed a model of the Zika virus in monkeys, a
close proxy for human disease.
The studies advance
efforts in fighting the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has swept through the
Americas and Caribbean since last fall, and has been linked to thousands of
cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect, in Brazil, as well as to
neurological disorders. On Feb. 1, the World Health Organization declared Zika
a global health emergency.
"With diseases
spread by biting insects, such as Zika, standard quarantine measures are
useless, so stopping an outbreak in its tracks requires a vaccine-led
approach," said Dr. Derek Gatherer, a lecturer in the division of
biomedical and life sciences at Britain's Lancaster University.
In the mouse study,
published in the journal Nature, a team led by Dr. Dan Barouch of Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, tested two different
vaccine candidates in a strain of mice that develops Zika symptoms.
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