Path to Zika vaccine strewn with hurdles

The world is once again asking scientists and drugmakers to come up rapidly with a vaccine for a viral disease that, in the latest case, few people had heard of until a few weeks ago, and even fewer feared. Making a shot to generate an immune response against the Zika virus, which is sweeping through the Americas, should not be too hard in theory. However, producing a safe, effective and deliverable product to protect women and girls who are at risk is not easy in practice. For a start, scientists around the world know even less about Zika than they did about the Ebola virus that caused an unprecedented epidemic in West Africa last year. Ebola, due to its deadly power, was the subject of bioterrorism research, giving at least a base for speeding up vaccine work. This time, the knowledge gap is more daunting. There are just 30 mentions of Zika in patents,...