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By Nopporn Wong-Anan
Melanie Saville, Sanofi Pasteur's head of the Clinical Dengue Programme, told
Reuters vaccine trials in tropical countries were making progress, and should
provide sufficient clinical data for regulatory approvals by 2015.
Saville said developing a vaccine against dengue, the most widespread tropical
disease after malaria, was more challenging than other diseases as there were
four strains of the virus that could cause the infection.
"It is fair to say some of the vaccines are the easy targets because the technology
is relatively easy to produce. Dengue is a more difficult target," she said.
If a dengue survivor is later infected with another strain of dengue, the person is
highly likely to develop haemorrhagic dengue fever, which can be deadly.
Of the estimated 230 million people infected annually, two million, mostly children,
develop dengue haemorrhagic fever, which is the top cause of hospitalisation in
Southeast Asia, she said.
Dengue outbreaks have risen in the Asia-Pacific in the past year, killing three times
more people than in recent years, an official at the World Health Organisation said
in March.
Last year, 3,255 people died of the disease in the agency's Southeast Asia
countries grouping, which includes South Asia and North Korea as well as
Indonesia and Thailand.
Sanofi-Aventis Chief Executive Chris Viehbacher told Reuters in March the dengue
vaccine had billion-dollar sales potential as drugmakers' traditional model was
under threat from the looming loss of exclusivity on some of the industry's biggest
sellers. Saville declined to discuss the vaccine's sale potential, but said the vaccine
would be in great demand once available.
"It is a bit early to really think about revenue, but it is probably the best way to think
about that is in the perspective of the epidemiology of the disease. Indeed almost
half of the world population live in areas at risk of dengue infection."