India may soon get a vaccine for dengue — a mosquito-borne viral disease. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has invited domestic pharma companies to collaborate on the development of the country's first vaccine for dengue.

Pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers — who have developed potential vaccine candidates against dengue and have successfully completed their Phase I and Phase II clinical trials — can submit their expressions of Interest by March 11, 2022.

The World Health Organization identified dengue as one of the top ten global health threats in 2019. It noted that Asia accounts for 70 per cent of the total dengue cases reported from 129 countries. According to the National Centre for Vector-Borne Diseases Control data, India reported 1,23,106 dengue cases and 90 deaths in 2021 (till October).

"As of now, there is no specific treatment for dengue/severe dengue. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop effective vaccines against it," ICMR added.

The ICMR has been mandated to address the growing demands of scientific advances in biomedical research and find practical solutions to health problems, according to Samiran Panda, Additional Director General of ICMR.

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ICMR will provide all technical support for companies conducting Phase III trials. The collaboration will be on a royalty basis for a fixed-term contract.

"Under this EoI, ICMR offers the institutional infrastructure for undertaking further R&D activities and vaccine clinical trial for evaluation of efficacy along with safety and immunogenicity as per regulatory requirement," the ICMR document said.

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