The Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended new treatment practices for shingles based on a vaccine initially developed at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, now the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

Paul Tabor, Associate Director of CU Innovations at the University of Colorado Anschutz, said, “The Shingrix vaccine is an important advance in the prevention of a very painful disease that affects millions of people each year and disproportionally impacts patients over 50 years old.”

Shingrix is the second vaccine approved to prevent shingles. The existing drug treatment, Zostavax, also was developed at the University of Colorado and has been prescribed in the US since 2006.

Shingrix is a recombinant plasmid vaccine based upon a truncated varicella-zoster virus glycoprotein which is effective at immunizing humans against shingles. It stimulates an immune response that can be more powerful and longer lasting than current therapies. The technology was developed by former CU professor of neurology and microbiology Abbas Vafai in the 1980s.

“It was a long road to get here, but the obstacle was because it is a unique vaccine,” Vafai said. “The vaccine involves single-gene genetic engineering. The vaccine contains a single viral protein purified in the lab–not the whole virus.”

The CU Board of Regents was granted two patents related to Shingrix, both now assigned to a commercial partner.