The Rush to Create a Zika Virus Vaccine

February 19, 2016

The Rush to Create a Zika Virus Vaccine Scientists are rushing to develop a vaccine for the Zika virus since its massive spread. While it still looks like it could be at least a year or two before we see anything, pharmaceutical companies are locking their best scientists in their labs to start working on one. Drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur is the first to publicly announce its launching effort to come up with a Zika vaccine. The company's Zike vaccine team plans on using their past experiencing creating a vaccine for the dengue virus, yellow fever, and Japanese encephalitis to help them develop a vaccine for Zika as soon as possible. Dengue fever is in the same family of viruses as the Zika virus, so scientists hope that their dengue vaccine will be useful in telling them how to make a Zika vaccine. Other vaccines in various stages of development such as for dengue, West Nile, and Chikungunya, which are all from the same family of viruses, will hopefully offer a pattern that scientists can work off of to create the Zika vaccine. How long do you think it will take scientists to develop a vaccine? When do you think one will be available for public use?