From The Daily Campus
April 8, 2021
A University of Connecticut associate professor recently had successful results in animal trials and is moving onto the next steps to produce a Zika virus vaccine.
Paulo Verardi, associate professor of virology and vaccinology, with help from then Ph.D. student Brittany Jasperse, were among the first researchers to file for a grant with the National Institutes of Health and receive a federal grant to work on a Zika vaccine.
In the pre-clinical animal trials, the mice that were given a single dose Zika virus vaccine showed no sign of the disease in their bodies or blood. For the ones in the placebo group who did not receive the vaccination, they did allow replication of the virus.
“The animals that were vaccinated did not show evidence of virus replication,” Verardi said. “We could not detect the virus in them.”