Prototype chikungunya vaccine developed by Wageningen University

Wageningen University, part of Wageningen UR has developed a prototype vaccine against chikungunya in a joint effort with the Erasmus Medical Centre and TI Pharma. This prototype may hopefully lead to the first working vaccine against chikungunya, a geographically strongly expanding viral disease. This mosquito-borne disease is characterized by symptoms such as acute fever, a conspicuous rash and debilitating, sometimes chronic, joint pain. The chikungunya virus originates from Africa but is now mostly affecting Asia and the Indian subcontinent where infectious tiger mosquitoes transmit the disease to humans, affecting an estimated 5–10 million people since its re-emergence in 2004. The dramatic global expansion in the geographic distribution of the tiger mosquito has also resulted in small disease outbreaks of chikungunya in Europe. Scientists at Wageningen University and Erasmus Medical Centre have joined forces together with TI Pharma, allowing them to develop a vaccine for the disease. This experimental vaccine produced at the Wageningen...