Project description
Vaccines and antibodies against hemorrhagic fever
The Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) is primarily transmitted to humans by ticks. The EU-funded CCHFVACIM project is focused on developing prophylactic and therapeutic countermeasures, including an mRNA vaccine and immunotherapeutic monoclonal antibodies. Building on past successes, the project employs a one-health platform strategy, utilising advanced animal models and establishing a biobank from patients. The initiative contributes to European infrastructure development, and ultimately aims to create an efficacious roadmap for clinical trials, disseminating results to scientific communities and health organisations. Collectively, the CCHFVACIM work is expected to enhance preparedness for CCHF outbreaks and help mitigate the disease's impact.
Objective
The CCHFVACIM project is an ambitious collaborative effort aimed at developing both prophylactic and therapeutic effective countermeasures against Crimean Congo Haemorrhagic Fever Virus (CCHFV), one of the most threatening vector-borne pathogens, widely distributed, including in the European continent.
Deep structural biology studies on viral glycoproteins and investigation of the immunogenicity of the viral antigens will be combined with optimisation of an mRNA vaccine candidate against the virus and characterisation of the resulting protective immunity, as well as with the development of immunotherapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) based on CCHFV’s antigenic targets.
To achieve the overarching goals, the CCHFVACIM project will build on the success of previous projects such as CCHFever (FP7), CCHFVaccine (H2020) and go the extra mile by initiating a unique One-Health platform strategy to address different aspects of this severe public health threat. On one hand, the project will use several advanced animal models (mice, sheep, and non-human primate) to assess and compare the efficacy of mRNA vaccine candidates, mAbs and therapeutic mRNA; on the other hand, it will establish a biobank from CCHF patients to build up a pipeline for the production of mAbs against CCHFV from their B cells.
Importantly, the project will also contribute to capacity building of European infrastructures, with the establishment of a platform on mRNA-based vaccine at one of the partner institutions.
Ultimately, CCHFVACIM will permit to develop a road map to bring the most efficacious vaccine candidates and immunotherapy tools to clinical trial Phase I in humans.
The project results will be widely disseminated among the scientific community, public health authorities, non-governmental organisations, outbreak management teams, and hospitals, with the final scope of both contributing to contain the burden of CCHF disease and increasing preparedness to new outbreaks.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologymammalogyprimatology
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiologyepidemics prevention
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologyvirology
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicineimmunologyimmunotherapy
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmolecular biologystructural biology
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
171 82 Solna
Sweden