TNX-801 (live virus vaccine for percutaneous (scarification) administration) is a potential smallpox-preventing vaccine based on a live synthetic version of
horsepox virus, currently in the pre-IND application stage.
Altogether, 212/214 predicted proteins had results in the nonredundant database; most (191) best-hit results were obtained for cowpox virus from various previously described strains, 9 for vaccinia virus, 4 for variola virus, 3 for monkeypoxvirus, 2 for ectromelia virus, and 1 each for
horsepox, camelpox, and taterapox.
They have already done it with
horsepox, which is not very different from variola virus.
In January, a small research team at the University of Alberta engineered a cousin of the lethal smallpox virus called
horsepox, using strands of DNA they received in the mail.
Researchers from the University of Alberta produced an infectious
horsepox virus, which they synthetically reconstructed using a published genome sequence and DNA fragments manufactured entirely by chemical methods.