Trials and tribulations on the path to developing a dengue vaccine

Dengue is a rapidly expanding global health problem. Development of a safe and efficacious tetravalent vaccine along with strategic application of vector control activities represents a promising approach to reducing the global disease burden. Although many vaccine development challenges exist, numerous candidates are in clinical development and one has been tested in three clinical endpoint studies. The results of these studies have raised numerous questions about how we measure vaccine immunogenicity and how these readouts are associated with clinical outcomes in vaccine recipients who experience natural infection. In this review the authors discuss the dengue vaccine pipeline, development challenges, the dengue vaccine-immunologic profiling intersection, and research gaps.