According to a recent study conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a novel, gene-based investigational vaccine protected both mice and monkeys against Zika virus infection after a single dose.
The vaccine candidate was developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and BioNTech of Mainz, Germany.
NIAID said the candidate, ZIKV prM-E mRNA-LNP, uses messenger RNA (mRNA) which the body uses to produce Zika virus proteins designed to elicit infection-neutralizing antibodies. mRNA vaccines do not contain live or inactivated virus, and therefore are unable to cause Zika infection.
The study, published last week in the journal Nature, gave 19 mice a single shot dose of the vaccine, with 14 additional mice serving as the control group. The researchers then exposed 18 total mice to Zika two weeks after vaccination. The remaining mice were subsequently exposed to the virus 20 weeks after the initial vaccination. In addition, five monkeys were given a single dose of the vaccine and six were given a placebo dose for a control group. All of the monkeys were injected with the Zika virus five weeks after vaccination.
After a period of examination, all immunized mice showed no detectable signs of the virus while the control group showed signs of the virus after day three. All monkeys in the control group showed signs of Zika in their blood while four out of the five monkeys in the vaccinated group were protected from infection.