French pharmaceutical company Sanofi has announced that world's first dengue vaccine will be commercially available in 2015.
The French pharmaceutical company revealed that it has cleared clinical trials at an international level. The firm has already started production of the vaccine at a new facility located in Neuville-sur-Saône, France, which is expected to produce 100 million doses of the vaccine each year.
The dengue virus is transmitted to humans by the Aedes mosquitoes and there are two species of the Aedes mosquitoes: albopictus and aegypti, which are found throughout the world. About 2.5 billion people globally live in high-risk dengue regions. Around 400 million people are also infected with the disease on a yearly basis. Currently, there is no cure for dengue and only supportive treatment is provided to reduce the symptoms.
"Until now, we were only able to provide supportive care for patients with dengue. On the strength of the outcome of this phase III efficacy study, we hope this will become an effective preventive measure against dengue," says Dr. Rivaldo Cunha, associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Universidade de Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil and a principal investigator of the study.
The Sanofi Pasteur division revealed that the third and final stage of the vaccine's clinical trials lasted for over two years. All clinical trials were conducted on about 31,000 people across Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. A study also involved about 3,000 people in the Indian cities of Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Ludhiana.
The clinical trials involved injecting the three doses of the vaccine or a placebo to healthy children over a span of a year. The study found that children who received the three doses had about 95 percent shield against severe form of dengue and 80.3 percent reduction in hospitalization risk.
Although the dengue vaccine has shown promising results against the severe forms of the disease, it is less effective in serotypes I (about 50 percent) and II (around 42 percent). Medical experts believe that even though the vaccine is not perfect it is promising as it can protect people against severe dengue.
Sanofi is said to have spent around $1.7 billion in the last two decades for the development of the dengue vaccine. The company announced that it will file for the vaccine's registration in several countries in 2015 and hopes to make the vaccine available by the second half of 2015.
