More than a dozen governments and pharmaceutical companies are working on a Zika vaccine, according to the World Health Organization. Some are pursuing traditional vaccines, like the ones used to inoculate against measles and chicken pox; these stimulate the body's immune response by introducing it to either a weakened version of the virus or just its antigens, the molecules from a virus that cause the body to produce antibodies.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) writes that another way, possibly cheaper and faster, would be to follow the blueprint used to create a vaccine for the mosquito-borne West Nile virus.
