URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Winter_2015_Melissa-McCarthy

“The things that we learn in this peculiar case with Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever have parallels for these other diseases.” -Alan Rothman

Breakthrough Research Toward a Dengue Vaccine

Medication to treat dengue virus does not exist. Most disease conditions are managed by administration of intravenous fluids to prevent severe shock. Rothman explains the problem, “Some people don’t get to medical care fast enough, so that’s where some people get into serious complications. If you have a huge outbreak, even if the management is very simple, you can fill up your entire hospital.” involves collaborations with at least half a dozen institutions including URI, Brown University, University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, State University of New York Medical School in Syracuse, State University of New York at Albany, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and with collaborators in Thailand. Rothman and Rothman’s research

his collaborators take a multi-pronged approach in studying dengue. The research constitutes three separate projects that involve children, adults, and a group of families affected by dengue. The aims are to: study how dengue is transmitted within a community, determine which people show the most severe signs of the illness, and analyze the development of immunity throughout time. A component of the research also will include vaccination trials to determine how the immune response to the vaccine relates to that obtained from natural infection. People accumulate immunity as they get older, which explains why fewer adults get sick with dengue than children or teens, according to Rothman. By the time people age beyond their teen years, they have been exposed to dengue several times so they are less likely to get dengue.

“The problem with dengue is that before you accumulate that level of protection,” says Rothman, “you have this window of time where you’re at increased risk of infection. One of the goals of the dengue vaccination is to get rid of that window of time, to build up protective immunity rapidly to all of the different types of dengue virus that are circulating.”

The Future of Vaccines

Rothman joined the Institute for Immunology and Informatics (iCubed), a biotechnological research institute focusing on the development of new and safer vaccines, as head of the Laboratory of Viral Immunity and Pathogenesis in 2011.

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