Recent Advances in Zika Virus Vaccines

• Published in: Viruses Vol. 10; no. 11; p. 631
• Main Authors: Garg, Himanshu, Mehmetoglu-Gurbuz, Tugba, Joshi, Anjali
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 14-11-2018; MDPI
• Subjects: Animals; Antibodies; Birth defects; Clinical trials; Clinical Trials as Topic; Congenital diseases; Dengue fever; Disease prevention; Disease Transmission, Infectious - prevention & control; DNA viruses; Drug Discovery - trends; Drug Evaluation, Preclinical; Encephalitis; Epidemics; Fetuses; flaviviruses; Genomes; Humans; Infections; Microcephaly; Microencephaly; Mosquitoes; Neonates; Pregnancy; Proteins; Review; Vaccine development; Vaccines; Vectors; Viral Vaccines - immunology; Viral Vaccines - isolation & purification; virus like particles; West Nile virus; Womens health; Zika virus; Zika Virus - immunology; Zika Virus Infection - prevention & control; ZIKV; Brazil; United States > US; ZIKV; Zika virus; clinical trials; flaviviruses; vaccines; virus like particles
• ISSN: 1999-4915; 1999-4915
• DOI: 10.3390/v10110631

The recent outbreaks of Zika virus (ZIKV) infections and associated microcephaly in newborns has resulted in an unprecedented effort by researchers to target this virus. Significant advances have been made in developing vaccine candidates, treatment strategies and diagnostic assays in a relatively short period of time. Being a preventable disease, the first line of defense against ZIKV would be to vaccinate the highly susceptible target population, especially pregnant women. Along those lines, several vaccine candidates including purified inactivated virus (PIV), live attenuated virus (LAV), virus like particles (VLP), DNA, modified RNA, viral vectors and subunit vaccines have been in the pipeline with several advancing to clinical trials. As the primary objective of Zika vaccination is the prevention of vertical transmission of the virus to the unborn fetus, the safety and efficacy requirements for this vaccine remain unique when compared to other diseases. This review will discuss these recent advances in the field of Zika vaccine development.