Scientists have taken a step closer to creating a vaccine against a virus that causes the most common form of diarrhea and vomiting in children.
A team of scientists from Harvard Medical School and the Children’s Hospital Boston in the United States created models down to the atom of key proteins that form part of the virus, called the rotavirus.
The rotavirus infects almost all children, usually between 6 months and 2 years old, and kills an estimated 440,000 children per year, mostly in poor countries.
The only licensed vaccine against the rotavirus, called RotaShield, was pulled from the U.S. market in 1999 over fears it could cause complications. It is made from live viruses.
But the American scientists, who published their findings in the British journal Nature, said a virus produced from the proteins they modeled could be more stable, cheaper and safer.
The proteins, on parts of the virus they called the “head” and “body” of the virus, contain many of the targets that trigger an immune response to fight the disease, they said.
“The work is a clear example of the way in which structural studies can contribute to new good ideas about strategies for vaccines,” senior investigator Stephen Harrison said in a statement.
“A vaccine based on these proteins could be very practical, especially for developing countries where rotavirus causes the most serious illness,” the statement said.
