INA significant development in DNA vaccination research, India's first and only DNA vaccine candidate for dengue has shown promising results. In preliminary trials on mice, the candidate generated a robust immune response and improved survival rates after exposure to the disease.
The DNA vaccine candidate has been in development since 2019 by scientists from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, in collaboration with nine institutions in India, Africa and the US. The team at NCBS is led by Sudhir Krishna, a professor specialising in biochemistry. While his laboratory primarily works on human cervical cancer research, the team became interested in dengue vaccination in 2011 after collaborating with St John's Medical College, Bengaluru, to sequence samples collected from dengue patients. "We need a dengue vaccine because it is a major public health burden in India," says Arun Sankara-doss, research lead of the dengue vaccine programme at NCBS. In 2021, India reported 110,473 dengue cases, ranking fourth among the worst-affected nations.
The team chose DNA technology since it is considered stable, cost-effective and safer than whole-virus vaccines. "Traditional vaccines essentially contain the whole virus. But we speculate some regions in the virus could be responsible for adverse effects," says Swetha Raghavan, a postdoctoral researcher at NCBS. A DNA platform, she explains, allows researchers to pick certain regions that can provoke an effective response and eliminate those likely to cause harm. Further, this vaccine can be modified to target other viruses.
This story is from the February 16, 2023 edition of Down To Earth.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the February 16, 2023 edition of Down To Earth.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
The Pill That's Roiling US Drug Regulation
The hard right is challenging FDA's authority to regulate drugs with its lawsuit to ban America's most used abortion pill
TURN OVER A NEW LEAF
The young leaves of pilkhan free are a worthy alternative to leafy vegetables in the spring season
FAIR PRICE
Using a calculator, Uttar Pradesh scientifically fixes fee for transporting faecal sludge to treatment plants
THE FOREVER POLLUTANT
From production to usage to disposal, plastic is a threat to those who come in its contact SIDDHARTH GHANSHYAM SINGH
Seeds from the past
For a decade,200 villages in Odisha have conserved and grown 190 indigenous rice and millet varieties with proven climate resilience
TESTING TIMES
While the world is trying to identify uniform tests to measure soil biodiversity, it still needs investment and infrastructure to make them available to all
BREAKING NEW GROUND
Soil health is typically measured by its nutrient content, by presence of elements like nitrogen and phosphorus. No country in the world measures it in terms of soil biodiversity-a counting of underground faunal populations and microorganisms.
PRIME TRIGGER
Heat stress dominates debate on the causes of a mysterious chronic kidney disease that continues to baffle health experts and is on the rise globally
Coral catastrophe
Consistent ocean heating puts global corals at risk of mass bleaching in 2024
CHIPKO A DISTANT MEMORY
Whenever a dictionary of green terms is written, no matter in what language, it will contain at least one Hindi word-Chipko, which means to hug.