A session on viral hemorrhagic fevers reviewed recent Ebola virus outbreaks and the discovery of a rapidly growing number of arena-and hantaviruses, their phylogeny and associations, and their specific rodent hosts. Approaches toward producing recombinant hantavirus vaccines and efforts to produce naked DNA vaccines for related vectorborne infections were reviewed. Summaries of the recent emergence of dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever globally and on Taiwan led to a series of talks on dengue vaccine development. Various approaches were discussed, including candidate live attenuated vaccines, purified inactivated and recombinant subunit antigens, and infectious clone-derived viruses and their engineered chimeras. F1 and V antigens were defined as important virulence factors in mouse and primate parenteral and aerosol challenge models.
Preliminary studies indicate their promise as constituents of a recombinant subunit vaccine.
Theodore Tsai Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Ft.