Towards development of a universal dengue vaccine – How close are we?

ABSTRACT

Dengue has been ranked as one of the top emerging diseases in Asia and Latin America. Current epidemiological data may not even reflect the true burden of disease due to under-reported figures. Vector control programmes have failed to contain the disease and worst of all, no specific treatment is available at the moment. Thereby, this pushes the demand for a dengue vaccine as a long-term protective approach. Despite there are numerous vaccine candidates ahead, they could be held back by different aspects in promoting vaccine implementation. Particularly for developing nations, logistics and cost are the major hurdles that need to be addressed in order to provide a quick yet affordable medical relief. As an alternative, plant-based vaccine production system is able to offer an attractive prospect given to its advantages of biocontainment warranty, low operation cost, rapid scalability and logistics flexibility. Researches that have embarked on this scope are laid out and reviewed in terms of the feasibility of plant system to serve as a biofactory for dengue vaccine.