This morning The Wall Street Journal had the Zika virus vaccine efforts on the front page with comments suggesting a vaccine is 18 months away. In section B the headline was “hunt is on for a Zika Vaccine”. About 90% of the space was dedicated to describing all the companies chasing vaccines. Then almost as a PS they add that the NIAID and the Scripps Research Institute are searching for drugs. This is interesting as remember back in January when I contacted NIAID they were waiting for someone to bring them an assay. So this is interesting and frankly I am wondering whether everyone is starting from scratch because of public pressure and the race is on. I wonder if we could get there faster by using all the protein models we have now put in the public domain. The 2 year wait for a vaccine I think is just a number plucked out of nowhere. As stated before – we still are waiting for HIV, TB, malaria and Ebola vaccines. So lets just not promise any delivery dates and get hopes up.
What is needed is collaboration. I think we need to also try to do as much as openly as we can and be realistic in how long it is going to take.
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