Abstract
Zika virus (ZIKV) is an arbovirus first discovered in the Americas. ZIKV infection is insidious based on its mild clinical symptoms observed after infection. In Brazil, after 2015, ZIKV infection broke out on a large scale, and many infected pregnant women gave birth to babies with microcephaly. The teratogenic effects of the virus on the fetus and its effects on nerves and the immune system have attracted great attention. Currently, no specific prophylactics or therapeutics are clinically available to treat ZIKV infection. Development of a safe and effective vaccine is essential to prevent the rise of any potential pandemic. In this review, we summarize the latest research on Zika vaccine development based on different strategies, including DNA vaccines, subunit vaccines, live-attenuated vaccines, virus-vector-based vaccines, inactivated vaccines, virus-like particles (VLPs), mRNA-based vaccines, and others. We anticipate that this review will facilitate further progress toward the development of effective and safe vaccines against ZIKV infection.
Highlights
Several in vitro experiments demonstrated an antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of Zika virus (ZIKV) infection after Dengue virus (DENV) infection, which poses a challenge to the development of a safe vaccine
VRC5283, and tested them in phase I clinical trials to assess their safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity in humans [20]. Another DNA vaccine was developed by using a single tetrafunctional amphiphilic block copolymer (ABC) encoding the full sequence of prM-E, which induced a high neutralizing antibody titer against three divergent ZIKV isolates in six-week-old female C57BL/6C mice [21]
The results showed that ZIKV E protein and its domain III (EDIII) fragment, especially E298–409, could induce sustained development of neutralizing antibodies [31]
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Zika virus (ZIKV) is a small envelope, positive-strand RNA virus belonging to the Flavivirus family of Flaviviridae [1]. The genome-encoded polyprotein can be cleaved into three structural proteins (capsid (C), anterior membrane (prM), and envelope (E)) and seven non-structural proteins (NS1, NS2A, NS2B, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, and NS5) [2]. The mature ZIKV particles consist of 90 E homodimers and 90 M homodimers on the lipid membrane, and the genomic RNA is surrounded by C protein (Figure 2). Studies have identified the major epitopes present on ZIKV structural proteins that can induce neutralizing antibodies [9]. Several in vitro experiments demonstrated an antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of ZIKV infection after DENV infection, which poses a challenge to the development of a safe vaccine. ORF: opening reading frame; C: capsid; prM: premembrane; E: envelope; UTR: untranslated region
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