Structural Openings to Understand and Prevent Tick Borne Encephalitis

Objectif

Tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) is emerging in Europe. It causes tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), a disease with a high mortality rate and even higher rates of life-long neurological effects in individuals that contract infections. As environmental and societal changes promote viral spread and current vaccine use is limited, it is not surprising that TBE incidence is on the rise. With uncertain diagnostics and no medications on the market, the threat to European health care becomes significant, making development of control measures a high priority.

Efforts to develop treatments and improve detection are largely hampered by a lack of structural knowledge about TBEV. Here we seek to fill the critical information gap, using electron cryo-microscopy, which has become a powerful technology for revealing atomic-level details about viruses. We will harness unique expertise in the fields of virology and structural biology to answer fundamental questions about virus structure, assembly, morphogenesis, and function. Explicit new knowledge regarding TBEV will push forward European excellence in virus research producing impactful results for their exploitation in drug discovery and diagnostic developments.