Sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Saint Louis University's Center for Vaccine Development is conducting research of an investigational vaccine designed to prevent people from contracting dengue, a potentially lethal virus that has rapidly spread around the world.
"Finding a safe and effective vaccination for dengue is a global health priority," said Sarah George, M.D., assistant professor in the division of infectious diseases at Saint Louis University and principal investigator of the study.
"About 3.6 billion people worldwide - more than half of the world's population -- now are at risk for dengue, and it is estimated that 100 million people get sick from dengue fever every year. Annually, more than 20,000 people die worldwide from severe dengue diseases, such as dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome. While dengue is most common in tropical and subtropical areas, outbreaks have occurred in the United States - specifically in Texas, Florida and Hawaii though no deaths from dengue have been reported in the United States in these outbreaks."
Saint Louis University, one of the Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units (VTEUs) funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the NIH, is the only site in the country conducting the study.
The clinical trial is the first research in humans of DENVax™, a dengue vaccine developed by Inviragen Inc., with support from NIAID, the Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Inviragen's dengue vaccine, invented by researchers at the CDC's Division of Vector Borne Infectious Diseases, is based on a safe and weakened dengue virus that has been demonstrated to generate long-lasting anti-dengue immune responses against one of the four dengue viruses. The investigational vaccine is designed to protect people from all four closely related dengue viruses.