Years af­ter Sanofi's Deng­vax­ia fi­as­co, Take­da lands first OK for its own dengue vac­cine

Take­da has scored a land­mark ap­proval for its dengue vac­cine, the first step in help­ing tack­le what the WHO has de­fined as a top 10 health prob­lem and crack­ing open a po­ten­tial block­buster mar­ket.

In­done­sia ap­proved the vac­cine, for­mer­ly known as TAK-003 and now brand­ed Qden­ga, for the pre­ven­tion of dengue dis­ease re­gard­less of pri­or dengue ex­po­sure.

The broad la­bel is key, be­cause while Sanofi lays claim to the world’s first dengue vac­cine, the roll­out of its shot, Deng­vax­ia, im­plod­ed amid a pub­lic health scan­dal. In late 2017, af­ter the Philip­pines al­ready pur­chased $70 mil­lion worth of Deng­vax­ia and be­gan a mass vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign, it emerged that the vac­cine ac­tu­al­ly car­ried a life-threat­en­ing risk for those who have nev­er had a dengue in­fec­tion. The Fil­ipino gov­ern­ment sus­pend­ed the cam­paign and sued Sanofi, which even­tu­al­ly con­ced­ed the risks.

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