Colossal, the de-extinction company, announces that the mRNA vaccine it helped to provide research support and acceleration funding for has been administered to the first elephant in captivity. Elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV) is the number one killer of Asian elephant calves living under managed care in North America and Europe and significantly impacts free-ranging populations of Asian elephants as well. Recent EEHV related deaths in several African elephants in the US have now raised concerns about EEHV in this elephant species, as well.
The ground-breaking work will help with efforts to generate EEHV vaccines for both species of elephants. The pioneering work of Dr. Paul Ling at the Baylor College of Medicine began in 2009 with a partnership with Houston Zoo where they developed better tools to detect and manage the elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV) associated disease.
In the past few years, progress on the development of the vaccine accelerated, in part due to the involvement of Colossal. Colossal supported our efforts to work on an mRNA solution approach . It quickly became evident that the mRNA solution was going to be feasible, so we prioritized implementation of that approach.
We are much further along today than we would have been without Colossal’s scientific support, research teams and funding.” Dr. Paul Ling, Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Virology at Baylor College of Medicine EEHV can cause lethal hemorrhagic disease .