Clinical trial of chikungunya virus vaccine begins enrollment

A Phase 1/2 clinical trial to test an experimental chikungunya virus vaccine candidate, called MV-CHIKV, recently began enrolling healthy adults at three sites in the United States.

A previous Phase 1 trial of MV-CHIKV was conducted in 2014 by vaccine developer Themis Bioscience of Vienna, Austria, which showed that it was safe and induced an effective immune response.

Specifically, the vaccine induces the production of both measles and chikungunya proteins once inside a human cell. The body’s immune system then develops antibodies against those proteins, which may protect a vaccinated person from future infection.

The double-blind study will be led by principal investigator Patricia Winokur of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine and will seek to enroll 180 healthy adults aged 18 to 45 at three sites including the University of Iowa, the Baylor University College of Medicine, and Emory University.

Each volunteer will be assigned at random into three separate groups that receive two injections at different intervals, at 29, 85, or 169 days after the initial injection. Clinic staff will then follow up with study participants over the course of 8 to 13 months by phone and through clinic visits, where participants will provide blood samples to determine if antibodies are being produced.

“Chikungunya virus can cause debilitating joint pain that can last for months or even longer,” said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which sponsored the study. “A vaccine to prevent infection with this virus would be of considerable benefit to people living in the more than 60 countries where chikungunya transmission has occurred, as well as travelers to those countries.”