Boston hospital to start clinical trials soon for Zika vaccine
With Zika spreading over the world, researchers have been working round the clock to find a cure for it. There’s a new hope for a vaccine for the Zika virus, and a Boston hospital is looking to start human trials.
Three groundbreaking Zika vaccines developed by scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have staved off the virus in monkeys, and researchers expect to start human trials as early as October.
The vaccine developed fully protected infected monkeys from individual strains of Brazilian and Puerto Rican Zika virus and had no adverse side-effects.
“The protection was striking and the protection was complete,” said lead researcher Daniel Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel. “Clinical trials should proceed as quickly as possible.”
Beth Israel researchers and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research previously tested two of those vaccines on mice. In a paper published in the journal Science, the scientists took that research to the new levels, adding another vaccine and testing them on rhesus monkeys.
One of those three vaccines, called ZPIV, will be moving to clinical trials, Barouch said. The vaccine was
given once to 16 monkeys, with a booster given after four weeks. The monkeys developed antibodies and remained healthy when exposed to the virus.The results come on the heels of an unprecedented federal advisory issued this week, warning pregnant women to stay away from areas of South Florida where Zika cases have been identified.
The virus is thought to cause microcephaly — characterized by stunted brain development and abnormally small skulls — in babies whose mothers contracted the illness while pregnant.
Beth Israel’s Barouch said: “The World Health Organization has declared the Zika epidemic a public health emergency”.
The first step in clinical trials, Barouch said, will be a small safety test on 30-50 people. But to progress beyond that, researchers need more funding, he said.
To continue the development of the vaccine, the researchers will be partnering up with the largest pharmaceutical company exclusively devoted to vaccines, Sanofi Pasteur.
“We don’t put vaccines into people unless, theoretically, they’re going to work and they’re going to be safe”, Osterholm said.
This is the second experimental Zika vaccine to head to clinical trials. The protein/cold virus vaccine was especially effective, sparking a significant immune response after just one dose.
The DNA-based vaccine contains genetic pieces of the Zika virus that are created to trigger an immune response, according to a statement from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Inovio Pharmaceuticals, a private biopharmaceutical company, administered its vaccine to its first subject last week.
Initial safety and immunogenicity data from the Phase 1 trial are expected by January 2017.
Still, with many years of experience in vaccine development behind him, Fauci said, “you’re never overconfident of the clinical results”.
“They have to go through an entire series of safety and efficacy studies”, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “So we’re cautiously optimistic”.
