A New West Nile Vaccine
Intervet has just released a new vaccine for West Nile Virus called "Prevenile". This is unique in that it uses a chimera technology . A recent article is available in " the Horse ". (PreveNile is based on ChimeriVax technology from Acambis, a leading biotechnology company specializing in the discovery, development and manufacturing of human vaccines to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as WNV, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, and smallpox. "This is the same technology being tested for the first-ever human WNV vaccine, which is currently in Phase II research trials," says Jahde. "The ChimeriVax technology combines two similar flaviviruses (yellow fever--YF, and WNV) into one, creating a chimera vaccine." PreveNile is a WN-YF chimera vaccine created by replacing the structural genes of the attenuated human yellow fever (YF-17D) vaccine with the structural genes of WNV. The YF-17D human vaccine is a safe, highly effective, well-tolerated, ...