The Zika virus presents a strange case for vaccine manufacturers. Infection has a serious impact on a percentage of the population, triggering crippling birth defects for babies whose mothers contracted the virus during pregnancy. But its effects on most people who contract it are relatively minor, so minor as to often go unnoticed. What does this mean for the companies and researchers racing to develop a vaccine?
Sanofi, headquartered in Paris, is the only major drugmaker going forward with plans to develop a Zika vaccine, according to Bloomberg. Getting the drug to market could take more than three years, in which time populations in areas hit hardest by Zika could begin to naturally develop resistance to the virus. This would be a losing gamble for Sanofi, which might still be able to market vaccines to small territories where Zika has not yet reached, but could also end up with large stockpiled quantities of the vaccine.
The U.S. government also has a vaccine in the works, which could see trials by mid-2017, Bloomberg reports, but like Sanofi, federal efforts to create a vaccine must contend with a significant lack of information about how the virus will evolve and what its ultimate disease burden will look like.