Project description
Making vaccines for mosquito-transmitted viruses ever safer
Live-attenuated viral vaccines represent successful vaccine approaches but come with a risk of reversion or recombination of the vaccine to a virulent form. An important consideration for mosquito-transmitted viruses is that they should not replicate in mosquito vectors to prevent vaccine-derived virulent strains. The EU-funded VIVARNAsilencing2 proof-of-concept project aims to enhance the safety of live-attenuated vaccines for mosquito-transmitted viruses by preventing their replication in mosquitoes. The researchers will exploit a small RNA-based gene regulatory network of the mosquito vector to target viral RNA for degradation. The initial focus will be on the viruses with a large disease burden, such as the dengue virus, Zika virus and chikungunya virus.
Objective
Live-attenuated viral vaccines are among the most successful vaccine approaches and have been used for decades. However, live-attenuated vaccines come with a risk of reversion or recombination of the vaccine to a virulent form. An important consideration for live-attenuated vaccines for arthropod-borne (arbo-) viruses is that they should not replicate in their mosquito vectors to prevent unwanted spread of the vaccine and vaccine-derived virulent strains. In this ERC Proof-of-Concept project (VIVARNAsilencing2), we will develop an innovative approach to enhance the safety of live-attenuated vaccines for mosquito-transmitted viruses, by preventing their replication in mosquitoes. To this end, we will exploit a small RNA-based gene regulatory network of the mosquito vector to target viral RNA for degradation in the mosquito. The mechanism and natural function of this gene regulatory network had been characterized in an ERC Consolidator Grant, which we will now develop into a commercial and societal valuable product. We will focus on important epidemic human arboviruses with a large disease burden such as dengue virus, Zika virus, and chikungunya virus, but the approach is readily applicable for all arboviruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes of the Culex and Aedes genera, including pathogens of livestock. VIVARNAsilencing2 meets an urgent need in the face of the enormous disease burden and strong global push to develop vaccines for the important class of mosquito-transmitted pathogens.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA viruses
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologyvirology
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsvaccines
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsRNA
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyinvertebrate zoology
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-POC - Proof of Concept GrantHost institution
6525 GA Nijmegen
Netherlands