Monday, 20 March 2017

Towards making a better Dengue vaccine


Scientists have identified a protein that could make for a better dengue vaccine in the future. It is a small protein, which is identical in all the four virus types of dengue. Making an effective vaccine against dengue has remained a challenge for more than seven decades now.

Research on dengue began in the year 1929. It took a long time for scientists to understand how the disease spreads and damages the body. Studies on dengue revealed that the virus that causes Dengue has four types, named DENV-1 to 4. These four types of virus trigger different immune responses in the human body.  Hence, it was a challenge to make a uniform vaccine to target all the four viral types.

A commercial dengue vaccine was available in the year 2016 but it is yet to be licensed in India. To help make a vaccine that prevents dengue infection from all the four types of virus, scientists at the Alaggapa University in Tamil Nadu, used a computer program to identify a protein that could make for an effective vaccine, and which is common to all the four viral types.

They identified a protein, which is made of fifteen amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. This protein is a component of the outer envelope of the dengue virus and shares 100% similarity in all four viral types. The scientists also found that this sequence shares some similarity with fifteen other dengue proteins, which have been proved to trigger immune response in previous studies. They published their results in the Indian Journal of Medical Research.

Using small proteins of the virus to make the vaccine instead of using the complete virus is a safer method of immunization. Predicting these small proteins that can make for good vaccines by computer programs saves time and cost. “In the future, this approach can be used for the analysis of other pathogens, providing a novel and generalized approach to the formulation of vaccines that are effective against a broad diversity of pathogens”, say scientists K Muthusamy, K Gopinath and D Nandhini. 

Published- India Science Wire

Reference: Indian J Med Res 144: 587-591.


No comments:

Post a Comment