Vaccines for viral hemorrhagic fevers — progress and shortcomings

• Dengue vaccine trial shows limited protection against Dengue 2 but no safety concerns.
• Development of Rift Valley fever vaccines that are safe in pregnant livestock.
• Defined correlates of protection for Ebola vaccine platforms could allow clinical trials.

With a few exceptions, vaccines for viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever remain unavailable or lack well-documented efficacy. In the past decade this has not been due to a lack of the ability to develop vaccine platforms against highly pathogenic viruses, but rather the lack of will/interest to invest in platforms that have the potential to become successful vaccines. The two exceptions to this are vaccines against Dengue virus (DENV) and Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV), which recently have seen significant progress in putting forward new and improved vaccines, respectively. Experimental vaccines for filoviruses and Lassa virus (LASV) do exist but are hindered by a lack of financial interest and only partially or ill-defined correlates/mechanisms of protection that could be assessed in clinical trials.