How to produce rabies vaccines affordably in developing countries

Rabies, a vaccine-preventable disease, affects more than 150 countries, annually killing more than 55,000 people, one every nine minutes, according to WHO data, which recalls the importance of primary immunization in all dogs, and mass vaccination of these is proposed to reduce and eliminate rabies also in humans in the most effective way.

Although, it is necessary to achieve a minimum coverage of 70% for the control of the disease in zoonotic regions. In many developing countries dog vaccination rate remains dangerously lowadue to economic limitations and the high turnover of dog populations.

However, conventional production processes for injectable vaccines rely on culture media containing animal serum and suitable surfaces for cell growth and processing. The complexity of such processes increases the costs and feasibility of production.

In these regions, improved vaccine production processes can help alleviate cost and supply constraints. On this matter, an international team has studied and optimized the replication and vaccine potency of the rabies virus in cell lines derived from the Muscovy duck.

During the studythe authors were able to verify that the rabies virus strain studied replicated efficiently in avian cell lines without the need for prior passage.

“In this study we demonstrate that the cell line studied is permissive for the rabies virus.” Therefore, “the production processes we report here achieved high virus titer and competitive vaccine potency.”

In this sense, they celebrate that “this finding is a good starting point to optimize the production processes of veterinary rabies vaccines that are expected to be affordable in endemic countries and, therefore, can contribute to increasing vaccination coverage in rabies reservoirs”.

–

–