NIAID-DVI: Dengue Cohort Studies in Thailand -- Tim Endy

As a intermittent blogger...or rather any type of blogger, I get an absolute thrill when I see my pageviews jump from a few dozen to a couple hundred at any given time especially since my blog goes "inactive" if I've nothing to say (ie. no conference, no workshop, no training to write about or I'm being lackadaisical about reviewing literature on a blog). On October 9th I hit 244 pageviews...and when I checked today I saw that on Oct 13th I had 488...it was indeed thrilling. The last time I experienced a thrill such as this was when I got into the thousands after I live-blogged the Workshop on Genomics Blog Series in Jan 2013.

It's always nice to know one's blog is proving useful from time to time...

Back to NIAID-DVI!

Human immune responses to dengue infection: lessons from cohort studies in Thailand
Tim Endy
State University of New York Upstate Medical University

Tim Endy like Dr. Kuhn is another one of those individuals in the field I could listen to for hours and not get bored. He's been a long time collaborator of my postdoc mentor, MAJ Jarman and WRAIR, where I work now. He also a retired COL did a stint at AFRIMS in Bangkok and is highly involved and I would contend a pillar in dengue work in Thailand.

Additionally, it's always exciting when someone you look up to in your field uses figures you generated in his presentation...huzzah!

That all being said...

NIAID-DVI: Sanofi CYD dengue vaccine--Where do we go from here? Jean Lang and Bruno Guy

Blog Series: NIAID-DVI

Sanofi Pasteur CYD dengue vaccine programme update

Jean Lang
Sanofi Pasteur

and

Immunological characterization of the Sanofi Pasteur dengue vaccine candidate: hypotheses and investigations to explain results of the Phase IIb proof of concept efficacy trial in Ratchaburi
Bruno Guy
Sanofi Pasteur

So by way of quick review:

credit: Roehrig's Presentation

• the CYD-TDV vaccine is a yellow fever backbone with the prM and E genes replaced by each of the dengue serotypes.
• There was good response in efficacy trials to dengue 1, 3 and 4 however the vaccine failed in illiciting a response to dengue 2 (response was about 30%) DESPITE having satsifactory PRNT titers...see previous blog post.
• In 2012 there was a Phase IIb efficacy trial in Ratchaburi, Thailand
• It showed the vaccine was safe.
• It showed that it was possible to make an efficacious vaccine against dengue
• It raised questions on the reference PRNT assay
• It challenged some of the dengue vaccine development hypotheses
• It reminds us how complex the disease is