French Drug-maker Launches Effort for Zika Vaccine

Local Editor

Drug-maker Sanofi Pasteur announced Tuesday it is launching an effort to research and develop a vaccine to prevent the Zika virus, after the World Health Organization declared a global emergency over its explosive spread across the Americas.

So far, there is no treatment or vaccine for the mosquito-borne virus, which has been linked to birth defects and is in the same family of viruses as dengue. However, the same company made the first licensed dengue vaccine shot, licensed last year in Brazil after years of scientific struggle to develop one.

France-based Sanofi said in a statement Tuesday that its experience with the dengue vaccine "can be rapidly leveraged to help understand the spread" of Zika and "potentially speed identification of a vaccine candidate for further clinical development."

In the context, the company declared that it is responding to a global call for help against the virus but did not indicate when Sanofi researchers might have an experimental vaccine to test. Vaccine development typically takes years.

The Zika virus was long thought to be relatively benign, with generally milder symptoms than dengue. But amid a large recent Zika outbreak in Brazil, researchers began reporting an increase in a rare birth defect named microcephaly, in which babies are born with abnormally small heads.

Relatively, the WHO on Monday called it an "extraordinary event" that poses a public health threat to other parts of the world, declaring a global health emergency despite a lack of definitive evidence proving the virus is causing the birth defects.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team