Development of new vaccines against dengue fever and Japanese encephalitis

Mosquito-borne dengue (DEN) and Japanese encephalitis (JE) viruses are the leading causes of arthropod-transmitted viral disease in humans. A licensed tetravalent vaccine that provides effective, long-term immunity against all four serotypes of DEN virus is needed, but is currently unavailable. Improvements to currently available JE vaccines are also needed. Past and recent strategies for the development of new DEN and JE vaccines include inactivated and live attenuated viruses, engineered viruses and chimeric viruses derived from infectious cDNA clones of DEN or JE virus, recombinant poxviruses, recombinant baculoviruses, protein expression in Escherichia coli, and naked DNA vaccines. This report summarizes some of the recent developments in DEN and JE vaccinology, particularly vaccine strategies that involve live attenuated viruses, engineered viruses derived from infectious cDNA clones, and naked DNA vaccines. Copyright (C) 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel.