Question

What disease does Dengue virus cause, how was the Dengue virus vaccine made, and how should it be used?

Answer 1

DENV(Dengue virus)- a family member of Flaviviruses cause Dengue Fever. Other names for this is the breakbone fever as it causes severe joint aches. There four serotypes of Dengue virus with distinct antigens and are named as:- DENV1, DENV2, DENV3 & DENV4.

Development of Dengue Vacccine

​​​​​​The process of development of Dengue vaccine was quite challenging because of four different serotypes of DENV(1-4) and the vaccine must be able to effectively immunize against all four serotypes of virus.

• CYD-TDV is the first licensed vaccine made by Sanofi Pasteur and currently being sold under the name of Dengvaxia. It is a live attenuated tetravalent vaccine. Firstly, structural pre-Membrane and Envelope genes from four serotypes of Dengue viruses are incorporated into the 17D strain of yellow fever virus separately by using recombinant DNA technology. This leads to the formation of Chimeric Yellow Fever Dengue-CYD as it contains two different set of genes. However, one chimeric vaccine contain genes from only one serotype of DENV- thus called monovalent CYD DENV. This way four monovalent chimeric vaccine are produced and these four vaccine are mixed together to form single tetravalent, chimeric vaccine formulation.

Use of Dengue Vaccine

• The Dengue vaccine is given in three doses (0-6-12) spaced with an interval of Six month. Also, there is an age range indicated for vaccine use that is from 9-45 years of age.