Evaluations of rationally designed rift valley fever vaccine candidate RVax-1 in mosquito and rodent models

Autor: Tetsuro Ikegami, Eduardo Jurado-Cobena, Cigdem Alkan, Jennifer K. Smith, Lihong Zhang, Birte Kalveram, Terry L. Juelich, Allen T. Esterly, Jahnavi R. Bhaskar, Saravanan Thangamani, Alexander N. Freiberg
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: npj Vaccines, Vol 7, Iss 1, Pp 1-12 (2022)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2059-0105
DOI: 10.1038/s41541-022-00536-3
Popis: Abstract Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a mosquito-borne zoonosis endemic to Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, which causes large outbreaks among humans and ruminants. Single dose vaccinations using live-attenuated RVF virus (RVFV) support effective prevention of viral spread in endemic countries. Due to the segmented nature of RVFV genomic RNA, segments of vaccine strain-derived genomic RNA could be incorporated into wild-type RVFV within co-infected mosquitoes or animals. Rationally designed vaccine candidate RVax-1 displays protective epitopes fully identical to the previously characterized MP-12 vaccine. Additionally, all genome segments of RVax-1 contribute to the attenuation phenotype, which prevents the formation of pathogenic reassortant strains. This study demonstrated that RVax-1 cannot replicate efficiently in orally fed Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, while retaining strong immunogenicity and protective efficacy in an inbred mouse model, which were indistinguishable from the MP-12 vaccine. These findings support further development of RVax-1 as the next generation MP-12-based vaccine for prevention of Rift Valley fever in humans and animals.
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