US, Australian Scientists Develop Vaccine Against Deadly Viruses

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US, Australian Scientists Develop Vaccine Against Deadly Viruses

by Staff Writers

Bethesda MD (SPX) Oct 06, 2006

Scientists from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

(USU) here, in collaboration with counterparts from the Australian Animal

Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, have developed a vaccine to fight two

deadly animal viruses that can infect and kill humans and are considered to

be potential biological terror agents.

Dr. C. Broder, professor in the USU Department of Microbiology

and Immunology, and Dr. Katharine Bossart, a former graduate student in that

department and now postdoctoral fellow at the AAHL, along with their

Australian colleagues, explained their vaccine discovery in the Sept. 27th

online edition of the Journal of Virology, ahead of print.

Nipah virus and Hendra virus are recently emerged and closely related viral

pathogens and both agents are considered to be potential biological terror

agents.

Nipah virus killed more than 100 people and a million pigs in Malaysia in

1999, while the Hendra virus killed two Australians and 16 horses in

Australia's northern state of Queensland in 1994-95. Both viruses are

carried by fruit bats in nature and have alarmed scientists with the ease in

which they jump from animals to humans.

The new vaccine is composed of a component of the virus particle known as

the G glycoprotein and its use has demonstrated complete protection from

infection by Nipah virus in a feline model. Because these viruses are so

similar, immunization with the component from either Hendra or Nipah

protected against challenge from both, indicating that a single vaccine may

be effective against both.

Although members of this group of viruses have only caused a handful of

focal outbreaks, the biologic property of these viruses to infect a wide

range of hosts and to produce a disease causing significant mortality in

humans and the recognition of their reservoirs in nature has made this

emerging viral infection a public health concern.

Hendra virus re-emerged in Australia in 2004 and 2006, and there have been

five recognized outbreaks of human Nipah virus infection in Bangladesh

between 2001 and 2005. To date, 102 human cases of Nipah infection have been

documented in Bangladesh, and 75 percent of these were fatal. There is

evidence that these recent Bangladesh outbreaks have not only direct

bat-to-human transmission, but likely human-to-human transmission as well.

There are currently no approved vaccines available for Hendra virus or Nipah

virus and no anti-viral drugs available to treat these types of viruses in

general. The development and testing of this subunit vaccine was supported

by the Middle Atlantic Regional Centers of Excellence and the National

Institutes of Health.

Established by the U.S. Congress in 1972, the Uniformed Services University

of the Health Sciences (www.usuhs.mil) is located on the campus of the

National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and is the nation's only

federal school of medicine and graduate school of nursing.