Toward a virus-free polio vaccine

Researchers are developing polio vaccines based on the viral capsid alone. When produced in recombinant systems, these could eliminate the need to propagate live poliovirus for vaccine production. Polio is nearly eradicated. But vaccine campaigns will continue in case, for example, some remaining infections go undetected. With the current technology, the need to continue vaccinations poses a challenge to a poliovirus-free world because “the only way you can make [vaccines] at the moment is using a live virus,” virologist Andrew Macadam at the U.K.’s National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, told The Scientist. The oral polio vaccine (OPV) contains live, attenuated virus; the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) is made by growing, then killing, virulent virus. Both of these vaccines could cause outbreaks, through reversion of OPV to a virulent form or through leakage of live virus from an IPV production plant, Macadam explained. To circumvent these problems, Macadam and colleagues are...