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NIAID awards $22 million to develop therapies for lethal viruses

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Kartik Chandran

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has awarded a 5-year, $22 million grant to an international consortium to develop antibody-based therapies against four deadly viruses with no approved treatments or vaccines, including Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and three hantaviruses.

The project was announced by Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which is part of the consortium.

In addition to the tickborne Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV), the grant will cover research into treatments for three hantaviruses spread by rodents: the Andes, Sin Nombre and Puumala viruses. According to a news release, CCHFV and the Andes and Sin Nombre viruses have been designated Category A agents by NIAID, meaning they are emerging infectious diseases or pathogens posing the highest risk to national security and public health.

The grant will fund a project called the Prometheus Center for Excellence in Translational Research, which will study viruses that spread from animals to people. According to the release, the project builds on a 2017 study published in Cell that identified human antibodies that can protect against all three major disease-causing ebolaviruses.

“There is an urgent need to develop preventive and therapeutic treatments against tick-, mosquito- and rodent-borne viruses that can jump into humans and cause severe disease,” Kartik Chandran, PhD, a principal investigator on the grant and professor of microbiology and immunology and the Harold and Muriel Block Faculty Scholar in Virology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told Infectious Disease News. “Prometheus provides a platform to rapidly discover and develop fully human antibodies as treatments against such emerging infections.”

Other institutions involved in the project include the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, the University of Texas at Austin and Adimab.

In the 2017 study, a research team used the blood of a survivor of the West African Ebola epidemic to analyze 349 natural human antibodies against ebolaviruses. They found that two of the antibodies neutralized all six known ebolaviruses in tissue culture. The researchers then developed MBP134, a cocktail of two human monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that protected animals against all three major disease-causing ebolaviruses.

The news release notes that ZMapp (Mapp Biopharmaceutical), an mAb cocktail that is currently part of a landmark multidrug trial being conducted during the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is effective against only one ebolavirus.

“Prometheus will leverage this proven approach for rapid mAb discovery and evaluation to develop prophylactics or therapeutics for two other important groups of emerging viruses with potential to cause severe disease outbreaks in humans,” Chandran said in the release. – by Bruce Thiel

Reference:

Wec et al. Cell. 2017;doi:10.1016/j.cell.2017.04.037.

Disclosure: Chandran is employed by Albert Einstein College of Medicine.