WHO Working Group on technical specifications for manufacture and evaluation of dengue vaccines

In May 2009, a group of international experts on dengue, vaccine quality and clinical evaluation met together (i) to review disease, vaccine pipeline, quality issues in manufacturing, issues of environmental risk assessment, nonclinical and clinical evaluation of live recombinant dengue vaccines and (ii) to initiate revising WHO guidelines for the production and quality control of candidate tetravalent dengue vaccines (live). This report summarizes an exchange of views on scientific and technical issues related to the quality, safety and efficacy of candidate dengue vaccines. Recognizing live dengue vaccines are the major vaccines in the clinical pipeline, the Working Group agreed (i) to focus on live dengue vaccines in the revision of the WHO guidelines and (ii) to add new guidelines on nonclinical and clinical evaluation, and environmental risk assessment for live dengue vaccines in the revision.