Chikungunya Vaccine Hope
06. Feb, 2010 
2 Comments
A vaccine against the dreaded Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is nearly there! A team of scientists from the USA have discovered a virus-like particle that mimics the CHIKV.
CHIKV is a very infectious virus transmitted to humans via some species of mosquitoes. The re-emergence of the virus in Kenya, 2004, lead to widespread infection within the Indian Ocean, including Mauritius.
Gary Nabel from the Vaccine Research Center, US National Institutes of Health, Maryland, USA and some colleagues made a vaccine which works with non-human primates. They assembled proteins to form virus-like particles (VLPs), which mimic the virus but aren’t infectious. Rhesus monkeys injected with the VLPs produced antibodies which made them completely immune to the CHIKV.
Immunization with this alphavirus VLP vaccines represents a serious strategy to contain the spread of the CHIKV in the human population.
Link to paper: Nature Medicine, DOI: 10.1038/nm.2105
Thank god I wasn’t in MU when that virus struck. But I remember how worried I got for my parents and siblings. My mum was in such a panic too.
Damn those viruses…
I’m kind of worried about that… It keeps on raining and there is water accumulating everywhere; the best nest for mosquitoes :-S