Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense
Open Access

Review Article

Tick-borne Encephalitis Vaccines

Axel T Lehrer¹ and Michael R. Holbrook^2*

¹PanThera Biopharma, Aiea, HI 96701

²NIAID Integrated Research Facility, Ft. Detrick, Frederick MD 21702

*Corresponding Author:

Michael R. Holbrook, PhD
NIAID Integrated Research Facility
8200 Research Plaza
Ft. Detrick,Frederick, MD 21702
Tel: 301-631- 7265
Fax: 301-619-5029
E-mail: Michael.holbrook@nih.gov

Received Date: July 26, 2010; Accepted Date: August 25, 2011; Published Date: September 25, 2011

Citation: Lehrer AT, Holbrook MR (2011) Tick-borne Encephalitis Vaccines. J Bioterr Biodef S1:003. doi: 10.4172/2157-2526.S1-003

Copyright: © 2011 Lehrer AT, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is a disease that is found from western Europe across Asia and into Japan. In recent years the incidence rate has been increasing as has the endemic range of the virus. Tick-borne encephalitis is caused by three genetically distinct sutypes of viruses within a single TBE virus (TBEV) serocomplex. These three subtypes consist of Far-eastern subtype TBEV (TBEV-FE), Siberian subtype (TBEV-Sib) and European subtype (TBEV-Eu). Each of these subtypes cause clinically distinct diseases with varying degrees of severity. Development of the first vaccines for TBEV began in the late 1930s shortly after the first isolation of TBEV-FE in Russia. In the 1970s Austria began large scale vaccine production and a nationalized vaccine campaign that significantly reduced the incidence rate of TBE. Currently there are four licensed TBE vaccines, two in Europe and two in Russia. These vaccines are all quite similar formalin-inactivated virus vaccines but the each use a different virus strain for production. Published studies have shown that European vaccines are cross-protective in rodent studies and elicit cross-reactive neutralizing antibody responses in human vaccines. European vaccines have been licensed for a rapid vaccine schedule that could be used in response to a significant outbreak and reasonable neutralizing antibody titers can be achieved after a single dose although a second dose provides nearly complete and long-lasting protection. This review focuses on the current status of licensed TBE vaccines and provides a brief summary of technology currently being developed for new vaccines.

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