National Institutes of Health officials said this week that researchers may be closer to developing a Zika vaccine than previously thought and that tests on human subjects could begin in as soon as a few months.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview that government scientists have been able to leverage previous research done on two similar viruses — West Nile and dengue — to very quickly create vaccine candidates that target Zika. The researchers are now working on fine-tuning the vaccines and in manufacturing enough of to be able to test it on 20-30 healthy individuals this summer. Fauci said he is optimistic an experimental vaccine would pass those initial tests and would be ready for a larger-scale trial in early 2017.
