Andrew Crighton
Life Editor
Rafi Ahmed is the Vaccine Center Director at Emory University, and as such is the coordinator for a small team at Emory that is studying the recent news-breaking disease, Zika virus.
At the 45th annual Frank Church Symposium, Ahmed presented a lecture and participated in a panel on sustainability, health and technology. After the panel, Ahmed gave a one-on-one interview about the current state of research on Zika virus.
Zika is an old virus according to Ahmed; it was first observed in 1947. It is currently newsworthy because, for unknown reasons, it has spread far beyond the area in Africa that gave it its name.
For adults who are infected, it is a very mild illness that only lasts a week or two.
Through recent studies it has also been shown to cause serious birth defects when pregnant women are infected.
“The risk of transmission to the fetus is where the problem starts,” Ahmed said.
According to Ahmed, the team has three main goals: to develop animal models, including non-human primates (NHP), to study the immune responses of individuals who come to Emory who have been infected and third, an effort to develop a vaccine.
The goal of the animal models is to understand both the immune response and also how the virus is transmitted to the fetus.
During the panel, Ahmed stated this is one of the largest questions that still needs to be answered about Zika.
Zika is in the flavivirus family, which includes West Nile Virus and Dengue fever. Zika is the only one that is known to cross the uterus.
Mice will be the first animal models used, and researchers will study infection of both pregnant and non-pregnant mice.
Emory is one of a few facilities across the country that studies on non-human primates, and this is a very important step for the development of a vaccine because the immune response is much similar to that of humans.
“An NHP model could be very valuable, because once you have a vaccine candidate that’s promising, people like to see data not just in mice, but they also want to see it in non-human primates,” Ahmed said.
Understanding the human immune response is the second goal. Another team will be studying patients who seek medical help once they have been infected.
A third goal of the team is to work on development of a vaccine in cooperation with Harriet L. Robinson, Chief Scientific Officer of GeoVax, a vaccination development company.
According to Ahmed, there is a very real danger of Zika making its way into the mainland United States through areas like Florida, as well as Mexico.
Jerald Schnoor, University of Iowa, also spoke in the panel of health.
Schnoor’s presentation focused on the impacts climate change has and will have on water. One of the observable impacts of climate change is that mosquito borne disease areas are currently spreading farther than ever before, because the habitat they can live in has expanded.
Mosquitos are the main vector for Zika.
“I think that’s contributing to the spread of the vector that spreads the disease. When the vector spreads, there is more of this disease,” Ahmed said.
Ahmed has also done extensive research into an HIV vaccine, which has not been successfully developed after 40 years of research.
According to Ahmed, a Zika vaccine will be very soon coming, relatively speaking.
He believes that if the funding and research are there, we can expect clinical trials within two to three years.
For a full vaccine, somewhere in the five-plus-year range can be expected.
