IVI collaborates to accelerate development of a dengue vaccine

The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) and Inviragen, Inc. today announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the ultimate objective of making a dengue vaccine widely accessible to people in countries where this disease is endemic. IVI, through the Dengue Vaccine Initiative (DVI), is developing strategies to raise awareness of the need to invest in research and development of a dengue vaccine, and to finance the development and distribution of vaccines, goals which will be furthered through their collaboration with Inviragen. As part of the collaboration, IVI and Inviragen also aim to strengthen the regulatory and policy environments to accelerate dengue vaccine development and introduction, and to raise funding to assist low- and middle-income countries with procuring available vaccine candidates. At least 2.5 billion people, or two-fifths of the world’s population, are at risk of contracting dengue. No specific treatment or reliable prevention method exists for the infection whose reach, already...