Defense Department biomedical facility researching, developing various infectious disease vaccines

Researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) are taking a leading role in the development of vaccines to combat some of the world’s most-infectious diseases, including Zika virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), malaria, and chikungunya virus.

After the development of an experimental Zika virus vaccine in early 2016, researchers moved to a preliminary human trial in November 2016, which remains ongoing.

According to WRAIR’s Director for Emerging Infectious Diseases Kayvon Modjarrad, the fast turnaround time [from initial vaccine to human trials] was due to earlier work WRAIR researchers had done on vaccines for dengue and Japanese encephalitis, which are in the same virus family as Zika.

“We were able to use the knowledge we had gained from that platform and make a Zika vaccine with the same methods and the same general platform,” Modjarrad said.

The institute is also in the process of completing trials for a MERS vaccine and is planning a trial for a new malaria vaccine that will start this fall. WRAIR also recently entered into a partnership with the Austria-based Themis-GmbH to test a new potential chikungunya virus vaccine.

PaxVax, a pharmaceutical company based in the United States, is also partnering with the institute on its own chikungunya vaccine and is working in tandem with WRAIR to conduct its next human trial.

“It takes all of these activities working in concert to efficiently develop new vaccines,” PaxVax Chief Scientific Officer John Smith said. “PaxVax very much appreciates the expertise that has been made available from each of these activities, and has a high level of confidence that effective vaccines will result from the close interaction that has been possible in this partnership.”