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Hemorrhagic fever in humans which are lethal in 40% to 90% of cases, are generally caused by Filoviruses, including Ebolavirus, Sudan ebolavirus, Bundibugyo ebolavirus, and Marburg marburgvirus. The most recent Ebolavirus outbreak in West Africa, caused by the Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV) led to 29,000 infections and more than 100,000 deaths.

A single glycoprotein expressed on the filovirus surface mediates infection and is the primary target for vaccine development. Structural differences in these glycoproteins between viruses mean that current EBOV vaccine development programs are not generally not designed to protect against other filoviruses, but the teams at Integrated BioTherapeutics (IBT) and The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI)  have reportedly identified broadly neutralizing antibodies that may protect against all ebolaviruses.

Therefore, this collaboration has now been awarded a $6.6 million, 5-year grant by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to develop a vaccine that protects against all ebolaviruses.

The collaboration will also involve investigators at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Bronx, NY) the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMIID; Frederick, MD), the Public Health Agency of Canada (Winnipeg, Manitoba), and the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, CA.

This funded project will be harnessing the role of the

surface glycoprotein, EBOV, for the rational design of pan-Ebolavirus vaccine candidates that can elicit broadly protective immune responses targeting structural sites that are shared between the different viral glycoproteins.

The project aims to develop and test immunogens that can be progressed into advanced preclinical studies. IBT says it then projects moving the most promising candidates into the clinic.

“This award will enable us to address a pressing global public health need, namely a single vaccine that can protect against all ebolaviruses,” stated IBT’s CSO,  M. Javad Aman, Ph.D., who is co-principal investigator for the collaboration. “To meet this challenge, we have assembled a unique team of experts in immunogen design, structural biology, vaccine development, and animal models of filovirus infection.”

“A novel aspect of the program will be the use of state-of-the-art imaging and computational approaches,” stated co-principal investigator Erica Ollmann Saphire, Ph.D., at TSRI.  “This design work will help us craft a vaccine to steer the immune response in the right directions.”

“We are excited to participate in this collaboration and to test novel immunogen design strategies for their ability to focus antibody responses to conserved epitopes on ebolaviruses,” added  William Schief, Ph.D., who is also a TSRI co-principal investigator for the program. “This will be a fantastic test for structure-based vaccine design, and it may give us insights on how to make vaccines for other more variable viruses.”

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