Consultation on dengue vaccines: Progress in understanding protection, 26-28 June 2013, Rockville, Maryland

There is an unmet need for a dengue vaccine to further prevent the spread of this disease and contain the growing pandemic. To this end several vaccine companies and academic groups are actively pursuing the development of a tetravalent vaccine to prevent dengue. In the last few years progress has been made in this area, including the first results of a vaccine efficacy trial and improved understanding of the immune responses to the infection. Despite this progress, development of dengue vaccines faces important challenges including the need for a vaccine that induces balanced immune responses against all dengue strains and an incomplete understanding of the mechanism(s) of protection against infection and disease. This is a summary of a Consultation on dengue vaccines held in June 26-28, 2013 by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (part of the US National Institutes of Health) and the Dengue Vaccine Initiative (part of the International Vaccine Institute). The primary goal of this consultation was to review the progress in dengue vaccine development, evaluate the known mechanism of protection of dengue vaccines and discuss avenues for future research.