New synthetic vaccine targets Chikungunya virus

While the benefits of vaccines are indisputable, the fact that almost all vaccines require refrigeration can be an obstacle to their distribution and use in underdeveloped nations. Partly because of these infrastructure problems, poorer countries tend to suffer disproportionately during disease outbreaks. Now, a new synthetic vaccine that contains no actual genetic material, and thus is stable in warm environments, could be a game changer in underserved areas experiencing outbreaks of Chikungunya. The Chikungunya virus, spread by mosquitoes, can be debilitating although it rarely results in death. There currently is no vaccine available for the illness. Investigators at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Grenoble, France and the University of Bristol in England, along with cloud computing specialists at Oracle, worked to engineer a thermostable vaccine that can be produced quickly, accurately, and relatively inexpensively using cloud infrastructure to process vast sets of data. The new synthetic Chikungunya vaccine has its...