PARIS—Drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur announced Tuesday it is launching an effort to research and develop a vaccine to prevent the Zika virus, after the World Health Organization declared a global emergency over its explosive spread across the Americas.
There is no treatment or vaccine for the mosquito-borne virus, which has been linked to birth defects and is in the same family of viruses as dengue. Sanofi made the first licensed dengue vaccine shot, licensed last year in Brazil after years of scientific struggle to develop one.
Sanofi said it is responding to a global call for help against the virus but did not indicate when Sanofi researchers might have an experimental vaccine to test
