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Scientists develop vaccines against Henipaviruses
09/Oct/2006: Henipavirus is a genus containing two members, the Hendra virus and the Nipah virus, which are considered to be potential biological terror agents than can infect and kill thousands of people.
But scientists from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) in U.S, in collaboration with their counterparts from the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, have successfully developed a vaccine that can fight these two viruses.
This new discovery features in the Sept.27th online edition of the Journal of Virology, ahead of print, in which Dr. Christopher 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 how the vaccine was developed.
Nipah virus killed more than 100 people and a million pigs in an outbreak in Malaysia in 1999 and the Hendra virus killed two Australians and a dozen horses in Australia’s North Eastern State of Queensland in 1994-95. These viruses are naturally harbored by Flying foxes (Pteropid fruit bats) and can easily jump to humans, a trait that has alarmed scientists worldwide.
The newly developed vaccine consists of a compound called G glycoprotein (an oligosaccharide), which has proved to offer complete protection against the Nipah virus in a feline. Since the Nipah and Hendra viruses have many similarities, this vaccine can be effective against both of them. Even though these viruses have caused only a few outbreaks, their ability to transmit easily to humans and to cause significant mortality, has made this emerging virus infection, a public health concern.
The hendra virus reemerged in Australia in 2004 and 2006; while there have been five recognized outbreaks of nipah virus in humans in Bangladesh, between 2001 and 2005. Of the 102 human cases of nipah virus documented in Bangladesh, 75 cases were fatal and the documentation revealed that the virus might have acquired the ability to transmit from humans to humans. No anti-viral drugs are available to treat these virus infections nor did we have any approved vaccines against them, till now.
Further Reading
http://www.vaccine-info.com
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