News Finding: The entire process of designing, producing, and testing the vaccine in mice took less time than it took for the researchers to obtain permission to work with samples of the Zika virus, which they eventually did get.
Paper Finding: By means of T cell stimulation assays we could unambiguously distinguish between unvaccinated and vaccinated animals.
News Context: Since the MIT method does not require working with the virus itself, the researchers believe they might be able to explore potential vaccines more rapidly than scientists pursuing a more traditional approach. The entire process of designing, producing, and testing the vaccine in mice took less time than it took for the researchers to obtain permission to work with samples of the Zika virus, which they eventually did get. "That's the beauty of it," Chahal says.
Paper Context: Analyses of the cellular response to the vaccine revealed an immunodominant H-2D b -restricted epitope derived from the ZIKV envelope (E) protein. By means of T cell stimulation assays we could unambiguously distinguish between unvaccinated and vaccinated animals. Expression of the expected ~54 kDa protein product was observed ( Fig.