A small vac­cine de­vel­op­er fa­vored by the UK gov­ern­ment in Covid-19 touts a PhI­II first in chikun­gun­ya

Be­fore Val­ne­va gar­nered the fa­vor of the UK gov­ern­ment as a po­ten­tial sup­pli­er of Covid-19 vac­cines, the French biotech prid­ed it­self on be­ing the first com­pa­ny to bring a chikun­gun­ya vac­cine in­to Phase III.

It now has pos­i­tive piv­otal re­sults to back up the break­through ther­a­py des­ig­na­tion the FDA grant­ed just weeks ago.

There are cur­rent­ly no ap­proved jabs to pre­vent chikun­gun­ya virus in­fec­tion de­spite decades of R&D ef­forts, a fact that un­der­scores just how ar­du­ous tra­di­tion­al vac­cine de­vel­op­ment can be, par­tic­u­lar­ly for ne­glect­ed trop­i­cal dis­ease. In a ab­sence of a ma­jor com­mer­cial mar­ket, the US gov­ern­ment and NGOs such as CEPI have de­ployed var­i­ous grants and in­cen­tives to spur on a small crew of aca­d­e­mics and in­dus­try play­ers, with Mer­ck, via its ac­qui­si­tion of Themis, claim­ing a spot in that race.

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