Table of Contents  
COMMENTARY
Year : 2017  |  Volume : 10  |  Issue : 1  |  Page : 15-16  

Zika virus vaccine: what next?


Department of Tropical Medicine, Hainan Medical University, Haikou, Hainan, China; Department of Tropical Medicine, Dr. D. Y. Patil University, Pune, Maharashtra, India

Date of Web Publication9-Jan-2017

Correspondence Address:
Prof. Viroj Wiwanitkit
Wiwanitkit House, Bang Khae, Bangkok 10160, Thailand

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Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None


DOI: 10.4103/0975-2870.197905

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How to cite this article:
Wiwanitkit V. Zika virus vaccine: what next?. Med J DY Patil Univ 2017;10:15-6

How to cite this URL:
Wiwanitkit V. Zika virus vaccine: what next?. Med J DY Patil Univ [serial online] 2017 [cited 2024 Mar 29];10:15-6. Available from: https://journals.lww.com/mjdy/pages/default.aspx/text.asp?2017/10/1/15/197905

The Zika virus infection becomes the hot issue in the medical society of the present day.[1] Due to the worldwide concern, the WHO has declared that Zika virus is a global public health problem to be managed on priority .[2] How to prevent the disease is a big question. As a mosquito-borne infectious disease, to get rid of the disease is very difficult. Similar problems as faced in control of malaria and dengue can be expected for Zika virus control. As we have never been successful in control of any mosquito-borne infectious disease, it seems a difficult task. However, attempts to control the disease are required.

Generally, to control a mosquito-borne disease, one has to focus on the mosquito vector. The control of larva and adult mosquito is the common practice. Several techniques are available, but those methods cannot completely control the disease. The simple suggestion is that to avoid visiting the endemic area might be applicable. However, due to the rapid expansion of the disease, the unexpected appearance of Zika virus in new settings can be seen.[3] For example, Singapore, a Southeast Asian country with high sanitation standards already has infected cases. The spreading of the mosquito vector worldwide due to climate change makes the control of disease more difficult. Therefore, it is no doubt that new preventive method for Zika virus disease is needed.

Of several techniques, the use of vaccine might is the hope.[4] Several ongoing studies on Zika virus vaccines are currently being done in many countries.[5] However, there is little progress. The urgent development of Zika virus vaccine as an epidemic vaccine model is the current topic in biomedicine. Based on the lesson learned from the development of dengue vaccine, a very long time is required before getting a good candidate vaccine and still longer time for completion of the clinical trial.

Step by step, searching of the epitope for Zika virus has to be primarily performed. This step is the clue for further vaccine development. After getting the good vaccine epitopes, further development of candidate peptide can be done and the biotechnology process can be used for purification and production of the new vaccine candidate. Then, the actual clinical trial in each phase is the final step before the approval of the vaccine for the real usage. At present, most research groups are still on the early step, searching for epitope. After the completeness of cloning for full-length infectious cDNA of Zika virus, further bioinformatics approach becomes the good tool for vaccine development.[6] The in silico searching for epitope by several bioinformatics techniques is done and reported worldwide [7],[8],[9] and this becomes the good step for further vaccine development.

With use of advent in medical bioinformatics and biotechnology, selection and development of vaccine candidate might be easier than the previous day, but the clinical trial is still a long process. It is the topic of risk versus benefit evaluation as well as a big ethical dilemma in allowance of any new vaccine with incomplete data from clinical trial to use in the situation of an epidemic of new emerging disease. For the case of Zika virus, it is not usually a serious infection and not all affected pregnant women result in teratogenic effect;[10] hence, the rapid development and implementation of any new vaccine without long-term evidence of effectiveness and safety are important issues in biomedical ethics. As noted by Omer and Beigi, it is a big ethical concern in using any new vaccine for the pregnant and it is the present challenge for the case of Zika virus vaccine.[11]

 
  References Top

1.
Wahid B, Ali A, Rafique S, Idrees M. Zika: As an emergent epidemic. Asian Pac J Trop Med 2016;9:723-9.  Back to cited text no. 1
    
2.
Gulland A. Zika virus is a global public health emergency, declares WHO. BMJ 2016;352:i657.  Back to cited text no. 2
    
3.
Chang C, Ortiz K, Ansari A, Gershwin ME. The Zika outbreak of the 21st century. J Autoimmun 2016;68:1-13.  Back to cited text no. 3
    
4.
Mukerjee R, Khera A. Zika virus: Vaccine initiatives and obstacles. Med J DY Patil Univ 2017;10:11-6.  Back to cited text no. 4
    
5.
Maurice J. WHO reveals its shopping list for weapons against Zika. Lancet 2016;387:733.  Back to cited text no. 5
    
6.
Tsetsarkin KA, Kenney H, Chen R, Liu G, Manukyan H, Whitehead SS, et al. A full-length infectious cDNA clone of Zika virus from the 2015 epidemic in Brazil as a genetic platform for studies of virus-host interactions and vaccine development. MBio 2016;7. pii:E01114-16.  Back to cited text no. 6
    
7.
Dikhit MR, Ansari MY, Vijaymahantesh, Kalyani, Mansuri R, Sahoo BR, et al. Computational prediction and analysis of potential antigenic CTL epitopes in Zika virus: A first step towards vaccine development. Infect Genet Evol 2016;45:187-97.  Back to cited text no. 7
    
8.
Chakraborty S. MEPPitope: Spatial, electrostatic and secondary structure perturbations in the post-fusion Dengue virus envelope protein highlights known epitopes and conserved residues in the Zika virus. F1000Res 2016;5:1150.  Back to cited text no. 8
    
9.
Alam A, Ali S, Ahamad S, Malik MZ, Ishrat R. From ZikV genome to vaccine: In silico approach for the epitope based peptide vaccine against Zika virus envelope glycoprotein. Immunology 2016.  Back to cited text no. 9
    
10.
Wiwanitkit S, Wiwanitkit V. Afebrile, asymptomatic and non-thrombocytopenic Zika virus infection: Don't miss it! Asian Pac J Trop Med 2016;9:513.  Back to cited text no. 10
    
11.
Omer SB, Beigi RH. Pregnancy in the time of Zika: Addressing barriers for developing vaccines and other measures for pregnant women. JAMA 2016;315:1227-8.  Back to cited text no. 11
    




 

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