Dengue vaccine from Instituto Butantan wins award – 06/03/2023 – Health

The project that enabled the development of a tetravalent dengue vaccine, developed at the Butantan Institute, was the winner of the 2023 edition of the Péter Murányi Prize, which focused on health research. Voting took place last Thursday (02).

Known by the name of Butantan-DV, the formulation is in the final stretch of testing on humans. The study, possibly the largest clinical trial of a vaccine ever carried out in the country exclusively by Brazilian researchers, has the participation of approximately 17,000 volunteers aged between 2 years and 59 years in 13 states.

Preliminary data sent to Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) in December 2022 indicate that the immunizer is safe and is 79.6% effective. Serious adverse events were rare: three cases (not yet specified) or 0.03% of the total. Among the most common side effects are pain, swelling and redness at the site of the bite and, in rarer cases, fever and red spots on the body that disappear within hours. The clinical trial should be completed in mid-2024, when the last participant to join the research will be followed up for five years.

Butantan-DV began to be developed at the São Paulo institute in 2010, in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in the United States, and with the support of FAPESP (São Paulo State Research Support Foundation).

Produced with attenuated virus, the formulation has the potential to protect against the four dengue viruses with a single dose. Clinical trials began in 2013 with support from Fundação Butantan and BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development), within the scope of the project “Development of a tetravalent vaccine against dengue”, coordinated by researcher Neuza Frazatti Gallina, who represented the Butantan team during the awards ceremony alongside Claudia Botelho.

“In Brazil alone, in 2022, approximately 1.4 million people were affected by this disease, resulting in numerous hospitalizations and about a thousand deaths. The fight against the mosquito that transmits dengue has been completely inefficient. Thus, only this vaccine will be able to control the disease,” said Frazatti Gallina in a video presented at the ceremony.

The researcher believes that, in addition to the impact on public health, there will also be an important economic impact. “It reduces costs with hospitalizations and absences from work for affected people”, she said.

The second place in the award was the project “Digital surveillance as an innovative tool for facing current and future pandemics: from evaluating vaccine efficacy to predicting new emergencies”, developed at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) under the coordination of researcher Manoel B .netto.

The proposal is to use the large volume of data produced within the Unified Health System (SUS) in an integrated manner to detect new outbreaks caused by respiratory viruses (Aesop Project) and to evaluate the effectiveness of new vaccines in a short period of time (Project VigiVac).

In third place was the project “Technological sovereignty in the development of human vaccines in Brazil: SpiN-Tech Vaccine MCTI UFMG”, coordinated by Ricardo Gazzinelli at the Vaccine Technology Center of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (CTVacinas-UFMG).

Currently in the first phase of human testing, the vaccine against COVID-19 developed in Brazil seeks to induce the so-called cellular immune response in the body, that is, the production of defense cells (T lymphocytes) specialized in recognizing and killing the new coronavirus. . In theory, this type of protection would remain effective even in the face of the emergence of new variants. The pre-clinical tests were conducted in partnership with researchers from the University of São Paulo (USP) and were supported by FAPESP. The results were released in August 2022 in the journal Nature Communications (read more at: agencia.fapesp.br/39467/ and agencia.fapesp.br/40153/).

In all, 138 works were nominated by 70 institutions across the country to participate in the 21st edition of the Péter Murányi Prize. The three finalists were chosen by the Technical & Scientific Committee, made up of Arnaldo Lopes Colombo (Federal University of São Paulo), Francisco Laurindo (USP), Iscia Lopes Cendes (State University of Campinas) and Luisa Lina Villa (USP).

Established in 1999, the award is promoted annually with the aim of recognizing and rewarding works that, in an innovative and practical way, contribute to improving the quality of life of the population. In all, it offers BRL 250,000 to the finalists, in addition to a trophy and certificate of public recognition.