A failed clinical trial in the late '60s pushed the development of an RSV vaccine back decades.
for kids is not for lack of interest, experts say. But a trial gone wrong many years ago and a tricky target protein have made developing an RSV vaccine difficult.
Researchers’ attempts to develop an RSV vaccine go back decades, according to Dr. Ofer Levy, the director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children's Hospital.conducted a clinical trialInstead of protecting against RSV, the experimental vaccine made the children more likely to develop more severe illnesses if they got infected. Many children in the trial were hospitalized, and two young children died.
That's because the protein that the virus uses to infect human cells, called the F protein, is a wily target. It can rapidly change its structure, Schaffner said, making it difficult to develop a vaccine that can effectively target it. This problem is not unique to RSV; it's similar to how the spike protein of the coronavirus rapidly changes, making it easier for the virus to dodge Covid vaccines, said Dr. Céline Gounder, a senior fellow at KFF, formerly known as Kaiser Family Foundation, and an infectious disease specialist.
Still, two vaccines — from drugmakers Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline — have shown promise in late-stage clinical trials of older adults, a group that is also at risk for severe disease from the virus.
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