Health – Chikungunya Vaccine announced Bharat Biotech

Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne viral disease first described during an outbreak in southern Tanzania in 1952. Chikungunya is a viral disease transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes. It causes fever and severe joint pain.muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash.

Signs and Symptoms

• Muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash.
• The joint pain is often very debilitating, but usually lasts for a few days or may be prolonged to weeks. Hence the virus can cause acute, sub acute or chronic disease.
• There is no cure for the disease. Treatment is focused on relieving the symptoms.
• The disease mostly occurs in Africa, Asia and the Indian subcontinent. However a major outbreak in 2015 affected several countries of the Region of the Americas.

Bharat Biotech’s Chikungunya Vaccine Enters Phase-1 Clinical Trials

Chikungunya has lately become a public health concern, with a large number of people getting infected around monsoons.

Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech that is known for producing affordable and effective vaccines, including that for influenza A H1N1, swine flu, in the recent past, announced today it has entered human clinical trials for its chikungunya vaccine.

Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne viral infection that causes excruciating bone and joint pain.The indigenously developed chikungunya vaccine—CHIKV— has entered the Phase 1, first in human clinical trials of vaccine, to evaluate the vaccine’s safety, tolerability and immunogenicity.

There are four phases in all and it could take years before the vaccine finally is ready for use

• The placebo controlled study involving 60 healthy volunteers would test escalating doses of the vaccine in prime-boost regimen.

• The vaccine has been developed using an isolate of the virus from Indian epidemic.

• The inactivated virus vaccine developed by the in-house research and development (R&D) was found to be safe and immunologic in pre-clinical animal testing.
• After successful completion of product development and pre-clinical testing, the candidate vaccine was approved by the Drug Controller General of India for Phase 1 clinical trials in 2016.

If phase 1 clinical testing is successful, Bharat Biotech plans to advance the vaccine into Phase II/III clinical development.

The bone-breaking mosquito borne viral fever that caused the major 2006 epidemic possibly entered India from the Indian Ocean islands.

According to World Health Organisation, the disease has been identified in over 60 countries. It is a viral disease that is transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes, including Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus.