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The enemy of my enemy: A novel insect-specific flavivirus offers a promising platform for safe and effective Flavivirus vaccines

Auguste

 

 

Dr. Jonathan Auguste

November 20 at 12:20pm via Zoom

https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/93724179004

 

Dr. A. Jonathan Auguste is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology at Virginia Tech. He received his B.S. in Biochemistry with Biotechnology and Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus, in Trinidad and Tobago. Dr. Auguste then pursued his postdoctoral research at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston Texas. In 2017, Dr. Auguste joined the faculty at Virginia Tech. Dr. Auguste’s research focuses on understanding the ecological and evolutionary factors that influence the emergence, transmission and pathogenesis of arboviruses and developing appropriate intervention strategies for important arboviral agents. He is also a virus hunter and studies the genetic and structural characteristics of novel arboviruses he discovers during his fieldwork.

The recent emergence and devastating impact of Zika virus (ZIKV) clearly demonstrates that arboviral emergence continues to defy accurate prediction, and exposes our inability to rapidly respond to and control outbreaks. Vaccination remains the most reliable strategy for outbreak prevention and control, but vaccine development intrinsically involves trade-offs between safety and immunogenicity among conventional vaccine approaches. Vaccine discovery and the identification of novel approaches with increased safety and immunogenicity are essential for the evolution of vaccine development. Herein, we demonstrate a revolutionary new strategy to develop a single dose flavivirus vaccine candidate that shows exceptional safety, but generates rapid and long-lived immunity. To address the dire need for flavivirus vaccines, we created a chimeric virus (ARPV/ZIKV) expressing ZIKV prM and E proteins on an Aripo virus (ARPV; an insect-specific flavivirus) backbone for evaluation as a ZIKV vaccine candidate. We demonstrated exceptional safety in vitro and in vivo without gain of replication function in vertebrate cells, while offering complete protection against viremia, weight loss, in utero transmission and death in immune -competent and - compromised murine models. This protection was afforded by robust neutralizing antibody and T cell responses that were detected as early as one-week post immunization. Altogether, the data shows that chimeric insect-specific flaviviruses are a very useful platform and has ushered in novel opportunities to restrict viral emergence via vaccine development. This seminar will illustrate the findings for these studies and explore the future direction for this vaccine and other related research.

There are no suggested readings for this seminar.

Flyer not yet available.

This seminar will be recorded on the Fralin YouTube channel.