A recent study at the University of Texas Medical Branch has shown that an mRNA vaccine developed by UTMB scientists protects against Andes virus in an animal model. Andes virus is a prominent rodent-borne virus in South America and has human fatality rates up to 30 percent.
“In 2019-2020, Andes virus caused an outbreak in Argentina with 34 confirmed human infections, 11 of which were fatal,” said Dr. Alex Bukreyev, principal investigator on the study at UTMB. “There is no approved vaccine against this dangerous virus. We applied mRNA vaccine technologies to develop two vaccines which demonstrated excellent protective efficacy in a 100% lethal animal model. We used different RNA platforms to include a detailed comparison of the immune responses to them, which is important for the field of vaccinology in general. The results look very promising.”
Andes virus is a hantavirus which circulates in rodents and is transmitted to humans primarily by inhalation of aerosolized rodent excreta. There are cases of human-to-human transmission, and those who recover often take weeks to months to recover normal lung function.
During recent years, substantial advances have been made in the development of mRNA vaccines against various pathogens, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The mRNA platform has multiple advantages: it is rapidly deployable, highly immunogenic, non-infectious, lacks a viral vector or another carrier which could induce undesirable immune responses, and lacks a risk of incorporation into the host’s genome.
Bukreyev and his team worked with his collaborators Dr. Robert Abbott (UTMB), Dr. Ivelin Georgiev at the Vanderbilt University, and Acuitas Therapeutics. The project was supported by UTMB intramural funds.