Poster Presentation 9th Australasian Virology Society Meeting 2017

The pathway to a candidate Zika vaccine – generation and characterization of Zika-VLPs (#103)

Julio Carrera 1 , Joseph Torresi 1 , Jason Mackenzie 1 , Cameron Simmons 1 2
  1. Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Melbourne at The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  2. World Mosquito Program, Institute for Vector Borne Diseases, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

The Zika virus (ZIKV) is an arthropod-borne virus of the genus Flavivirus, which are small enveloped single-stranded positive-sense RNA viruses that include important human pathogens such as Dengue viruses (DENV), Yellow fever virus (YFV), West Nile Virus (WNV), Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) and tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBV). ZIKV is transmitted horizontally by infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, although transmission by seminal fluids and mother-to-child transmission have also been well documented. Zika is also responsible  for severe neurological complications in congenitally infected newborns, for which microcephaly is a signature feature.  Zika infection has also been linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome, a life-threatening syndrome in adults.  Both complications have increased in areas where Zika virus outbreaks have occurred.  Although the number of cases has decreased considerably during the last months, a vaccine against Zika is still widely regarded as a priority public health need, especially for pregnant woman and woman in childbearing age. Using an Adenovirus vector system and a clinical isolate of the Asian-Pacific lineage, here we have developed Zika virus-like particles (ZIKV-VLPs) as a candidate vaccine to prevent Zika virus infection. These VLPs have been initially characterized in-vitro to further describe their immunogenicity in mice. VLPs resemble the structure and antigenicity of virions, but they are replication-deficient since they contain no genetic material. These ZIKV-VLPs, together with murine and mosquito infection models as well as commonly used and a novel adjuvants, might be further used as vaccine and therapeutic strategies against ZIKV infections and provide insights of the use if this technology for other flaviviral infections and the generation of diagnostic tools.