DNA Vaccine Now Being Tested On Humans

A new proposed Zika vaccines, the DNA-based Zika vaccine GLS-5700, is now being tested on humans. If you thought the “Zika thing” was long gone, think again, pharmaceutical companies continue to look for ways to create a functional vaccine against the mosquito-borne illness. The study, which had its results posted in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that the new vaccine was “safe and elicited a robust immune response in study participants.”

The lead author of the study, Pablo Tebas, MD, said the results seem promising.

Here are the study details.

To conduct the study, Tebas and colleagues recruited 40 adults in the summer of 2016 to receive either 1- or 2-milligram (mg) doses of the vaccine intradermally at 0, 4, and 12 weeks. Accompanying each shot was treatment with Cellectra, a device that uses pulsed electric fields to introduce the DNA sequence into cells.

By week 14, 2 weeks after the final dose, all study participants developed Zika-specific antibodies, and 80% had developed neutralizing antibodies against the virus. Any differences in antibody development between the group receiving 1 mg verses 2 mg of the vaccine became statistically insignificant after week 6 of the study. (source)

Any DNA Zika vaccine side effects? Apparently, Tebas is happy with those results as well. He claims the only side effects were redness and irritation at the injection site for half the people who were injected.

“But the results in our mouse models were very promising.”