Est-Il envisageable d'utiliser le vaccin vivant attenué contre la rougeole comme vecteur de vaccination pédiatrique bivalent?

Live-attenuated measles vaccine is one of the best human vaccines available. During the 30 last years, it has been given to hundreds of million of children and shown to be highly efficacious and safe. This vaccine induces a life-long immunity to reinfection after a single or two low-dose injections. It is easily produced on a large scale in most countries and can be distributed at low cost. Reversion to pathogenicity has never been observed. For these favorable characteristics, measles vaccine might be a very promising paediatric vector to immunize children against both measles and other viral infections like AIDS or flaviviroses in the developing world. To this end, we developed a replicating vector derived from the Schwarz attenuated vaccine strain of measles virus. We showed the capacity of this vector to strongly and stably express proteins from Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or West Nile virus (WNV). This vector induces specific immune reponses against the heterologous antigens in vivo that, in the case of West Nile virus, are able to protect the animals from an experimental challenge. This work led to the setting of phase l/ll clinical trials intended to evaluate the capacities of this vector to induce specific HIV immune reponses in adults with pre immunity against measles.