Chikungunya vaccine using measles virus promising

A vaccine against chikungunya that is based on a measles vaccine virus has shown encouraging results in its first human trial. There is currently no approved vaccine against chikungunya. The candidate vaccine reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases is only the third to go into clinical trials. The vaccine, developed by Themis Bioscience, an Austrian biotechnology company, utilises a live but weakened measles vaccine virus, the Schwarz strain. The genetic material of this virus has been modified to incorporate five structural genes taken from a chikungunya virus. When injected, this modified virus infects cells, which then churn out chikungunya proteins that assemble into virus-like particles and are secreted. The virus-like particles are able to activate the immune system, giving it the capability to recognise and respond to a chikungunya infection. Use of the Schwarz strain was “a good technique,” observed Penny Rudd and Suresh Mahalingam of Giffith University, Australia, in a commentary published in...