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Zika vaccine could be in production by year’s end, says maker

BMJ 2016; 352 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i630 (Published 01 February 2016) Cite this as: BMJ 2016;352:i630
  1. Owen Dyer
  1. 1Montreal

A vaccine against the Zika virus could be in production later this year, said a Canadian developer who previously led the effort to develop the ZMapp treatment for Ebola virus disease.

Gary Kobinger, head of vector design and immunotherapy in the special pathogens programme at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory, told Reuters, “This vaccine is easy to produce. It could be cranked to very high levels in a really short time.”

Kobinger’s laboratory is collaborating with a team at the University of Pennsylvania led by David Weiner and with Inovio Pharmaceuticals and GeneOne Life Science of South Korea.

Inovio’s chief executive, Joseph Kim, called Kobinger’s timeline aggressive but possible. “I believe this will be the first to go into human testing. We believe we’re ahead …

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