New Delhi: The Union Health Ministry informed on Thursday that India will soon have vaccines against Dengue and the initial phase of clinical trials are done already.
The ministry said that several companies are interested in developing the vaccine.
“Dengue vaccine is an important agenda and we are looking at it very carefully. Certain strains of the Dengue virus have been licensed by several companies. We are working very closely with them to conduct clinical trials. Many of these companies have completed phase 1 study outside the country. Soon, a more rigorous trial will follow,” DG ICMR Balram Bhargava informed.
Indian scientists are working on a Dengue vaccine candidate based on the DNA platform. A preprint research paper has been published in the scientific journal MedRxiv titled ‘Immune profile and responses of a novel Dengue DNA vaccine encoding EDIII-NS1 consensus design based on Indo-African sequences’.
The research aims to address some of the key problems existing with developing a vaccine for dengue, the paper said.
The researchers believe DNA technology can be used to develop vaccines against tropical diseases including Dengue since the DNA vaccines are easier to produce, store and record an enormous amount of information.
An outbreak of Dengue has been reported across the country, especially North India which has received optimum rainfall this monsoon.
A dangerous outbreak was reported in Western Uttar Pradesh where thousands of cases and more than 100 deaths have been recorded so far.