WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Friday the licensing of a new vaccine against the highly contagious rotavirus infection.
The disease is responsible for tens of thousands of U.S. hospitalizations and hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world each year.
The vaccine, developed by Merck & Co. Inc., will be sold as ROTATEQ and will protect infants against rotavirus infection. The virus is the most common cause of severe dehydrating diarrhea in infants and young children.
The vaccine, which took 25 years to develop, was developed by three scientists at the Wistar Institute and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia between 1980 and 1991, by veterinarian H. Fred Clark, Dr. Paul A. Offit and Dr. Stanley A. Plotkin.
"This new vaccine against an important disease of childhood is the result of two leading academic research institutions and a major pharmaceutical company working together toward a common goal for roughly 25 years," says Dr. Russel E. Kaufman, president of the Wistar Institute.
