By Noemie Bisserbe And Betsy McKay 

PARIS--Drug companies are beginning early-stage research to develop a new vaccine against the rapidly spreading Zika virus, joining the race to control an outbreak that the World Health Organization said constitutes a global public-health emergency.

It might be years, however, before any vaccine reaches the market, meaning the new wave of research is unlikely to help curb the current outbreak. Though Zika generally makes people only mildly ill for a few days, it has been linked to a serious birth defect in which babies are born with undersized skulls and brains.

Zika's explosive spread could give pharmaceutical companies a new opportunity in an increasingly important category of drugs, but the impact of a vaccine would depend on the prevalence of the virus when it hit the market, and the ability and willingness of governments to launch massive vaccination campaigns.

To attack Zika, French drugmaker Sanofi SA said Tuesday it would take advantage of the research it did for its newly approved vaccine for dengue fever--the world's first against the mosquito-borne illness. The Zika and dengue viruses are in the same family.

"Theoretically, there could be some cross immunity," said Nicholas Jackson, global head of research at the company's Sanofi Pasteur vaccines unit, who will be running the new project. "We will need to investigate this clinically."

U.S. biotech company NewLink Genetics Corp. said it too was working on developing treatment options for the disease.

NewLink's infectious-disease team felt that searching for a Zika vaccine "was a project they could really sink their teeth into," said Charles Link, the company's chief executive.

NewLink hasn't begun human testing of any potential Zika vaccine candidates. "This is going to take some time and effort," said Dr. Link. "This is not going to be an overnight deal."

Epidemic diseases generally draw little investment from pharmaceutical companies because demand for those products is sporadic and unpredictable.

The WHO, the U.S. government, the pharmaceutical industry and others are working on ways to improve research and development for epidemic diseases, in the wake of the Ebola crisis in West Africa and as new epidemics such as Zika emerge.

At least a dozen Ebola vaccine and drug candidates were under development when the virus began to spread in West Africa.

Even so, there is still no licensed treatment or vaccine. One vaccine candidate, developed by NewLink and licensed out to Merck & Co. proved effective in a clinical trial, and the company is gathering data to apply for licensure.

The WHO, the United Nations public-health agency, acting on the recommendations of an emergency committee, on Monday called for more surveillance, research and efforts to control the virus's spread. Currently, there are no rapid and reliable diagnostic tests, drugs or vaccines for Zika.

Last month, GeneOne Life Science Inc., a South Korean biopharmaceutical company, said it had launched a joint research program with U.S. biotech firm Inovio Pharmaceuticals to develop a DNA-based vaccine to prevent and treat the Zika virus infection. U.K. drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline also said last week that it was assessing its research platform for the potential to develop a Zika vaccine.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health also is accelerating research into rapid diagnostic tests, vaccines, and therapeutic drugs for Zika, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an arm of the NIH.

The NIH has long conducted research into flaviviruses, the class of viruses to which Zika belongs, with about $97 million in funding in fiscal 2015. But none was going into Zika, Dr. Fauci said.

The institute is pursuing two different pathways to a Zika vaccine, and may get one into an early Phase I clinical trial this year, he said. But, he cautioned: "We will not have a widely available safe and effective Zika vaccine this year and probably not even in the next few years."

The once-obscure virus has become a major global health concern over the past few months, mainly because of its possible links to microcephaly in babies and Guillain-Barré, a rare disorder in which the body's immune system attacks nerve cells.

Health authorities in Brazil, whereas many as 1.5 million people may be infected with the Zika virus, have confirmed 270 cases of microcephaly since October.

Brazil isn't alone. Authorities now say they believe that some cases of microcephaly in babies in French Polynesia may be linked to an outbreak of Zika that occurred there in 2013 and 2014. Brazilian and international health authorities also say Zika may be linked to a rise in the number of cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Dr. Fauci said Zika is "the latest of a series of mosquito-borne diseases that have expanded their reach in the past 20 years or so." It follows dengue and chikungunya, he said.

"There will almost certainly be others," he said. "We need vaccine platforms that can be quickly modified for protection against emerging new threats and we need broad spectrum antiviral drugs effective against whole classes of viruses."

Peter Loftus and Denise Roland contributed to this article.

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 02, 2016 17:09 ET (22:09 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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