Recent Advances in Zika Virus Vaccines

Abstract

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.

Keywords: ZIKV; Zika virus; clinical trials; flaviviruses; vaccines; virus like particles.

Figure 1

Zika virus genome. The viral genome comprises of a positive sense RNA that encodes a polyprotein that is processed by viral and host cell proteases. The amino terminus of the genome encodes the structural proteins (C-prM-E) essential for virion morphogenesis. The non-structural proteins NS1–NS5 are important for virus replication, polyprotein processing and invoking a cell mediated immune response, along with immune evasion.