11 March 2004
A safer smallpox vaccine?
Last year, fearing that terrorists might use smallpox virus as a biological weapon, the US Administration recommended healthcare workers to volunteer for vaccination against smallpox. The program proved controversial as some were sceptical about the reality of the threat — and there are safety concerns about the vaccine. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has called the smallpox vaccine "probably the least safe human vaccine today". A safer vaccine is therefore an important goal. The highly attenuated modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) is one alternative to the licensed smallpox vaccine called Dryvax (also made from vaccinia virus). It's no longer possible to test a vaccine for the ability to prevent smallpox, of course. So a new comparison of MVA and Dryvax has used cynomolgous monkeys challenged with monkeypox virus. The MVA vaccine induced immune responses of similar intensity and nature to those induced by Dryvax, and was fully protective. An NIAID sponsored clinical trial is currently recruiting human subjects (via http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/) to a trial comparing the immune responses induced by single-dose Dryvax, and two doses of MVA.
Immunogenicity of a highly attenuated MVA smallpox
vaccine and protection against monkeypox
PATRICIA L. EARL et al.
Nature 428, 182–185 (2004); doi:10.1038/nature02331
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