Scientists make breakthrough in measles vaccine

Scientists make breakthrough in measles vaccine
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

PARIS, JUNE 28: Hundreds of thousands of young lives affected by measles can now breath easy following a breakthrough in a revolutionary DNA measles vaccine.

The conventional measles vaccine uses a weakened form of the measles virus in order to evoke a response from the immune system, so that an invader is overwhelmed by antibodies if it enters the body. The vaccine was introduced in 1963, but is known to be less effective for babies aged under nine months, as their immune systems are still immature.

Measles still causes the death of up to a million people each year, a third of whom are babies aged less than a year old.

Writing in the July issue of Nature Medicine, a US-published monthly journal, scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland reported that they may have found a safe and effective alternative.

It entails a vaccine that uses the DNA coding for two specific components, hemagglutinin (H) and fusion (F) glycoproteins, which are two of the six proteins that comprise a measles virus.

Rhesus monkeys injected with vaccines carrying the H and F glycoproteins stimulated antibodies that gave them protection from the measles virus, the scientists report. There were no signs of any adverse reactions, they found.

In addition, the vaccine would be simple to administer, cheap and not vulnerable to heat, which is important for immunisation campaigns in developing countries, they suggested.

"The development of a measles DNA vaccine may prevent the complications associated with non-infectious vaccine approaches and eventually contribute to global measles eradication," said Ann Arvin, of Stanford University School of Medicine, in an independent commentary.