RE:Defence Successfully Completes the First Milestone It's a personal thing but I would like to see someone develop a med or vaccine for Dengue Fever.
My son is over in Bali and has just contracted it for the second time. It comes from mosquitos and is most prevalent in tropical countries. He is in Hospital in Bali and his platelet count is 20 instead of about 200+.
There are 100–400 million Dengue fever infections each year, and cases are quickly rising. How can manufacturers overcome obstacles to developing antiviral treatments and vaccines?
William Newton May 20, 2022 Around half of the world’s population is now at risk of Dengue fever, and the mosquito-bourne virus is the leading cause of death in some Latin American and Asian countries. But despite a rapid rise in cases and decades of drug development efforts, the field has no specific treatment and only one limited-use vaccine.
There is no antiviral treatment for Dengue fever, and the only approved vaccine–Sanofi’s Dengvaxia–can prove risky. Dengvaxia can reduce the severity of Dengue fever in those who have had a prior infection. However, Dengvaxia may increase the risk of severe Dengue in those who have not yet been infected.
Experts say poorly coordinated clinical trial efforts, difficulties in animal models and laboratory tests, and a complex, evolving virus have stalled vaccine and antiviral development. Still, by streamlining clinical trial symptom endpoints and pursuing less traditional designs like platforms trials and human challenge studies, experts say manufacturers could make progress towards addressing this neglected disease.
From a biochemical standpoint, there are two key challenges to developing Dengue fever antivirals and vaccines, says La Jolla Institute for Immunology infectious disease expert Sujan Shresta, PhD. First, Dengue fever has four different serotypes, leading many biologists to see Dengue as four distinct viruses requiring differing approaches. Second, Dengue fever is an RNA virus, which means it constantly evolves as the virus replicates, she explains.
Put together, Dengue fever is a multi-faceted, moving target, and researchers do not fully understand how it evolves in mosquitos and human hosts, Sujan says.
There are 43 ongoing Phase I–IV trials for Dengue fever, the majority of which are company sponsored. As for the two other most common mosquito-bourne illnesses, there are 138 ongoing trials for malaria and just eight for Chikungunya fever.
To address potential challenges with animal studies, Shresta’s lab at the La Jolla Institute has developed a method for infecting animal cells with Dengue viruses. By using antibody dependent enhancement to prime cells to allow entry to real Dengue viruses, researchers can better observe the effects of Dengue fever in animal models, Shresta explains.
This method has also shown that prior exposure to Dengue virus can provide cross-protection against Zika virus, she adds. As a result, trials targeting Dengue could expand to include patients with or at risk of developing Zika virus infections, she notes.