Recombinant respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) strains expressing the G and F Proteins from RSV strains as well as renilla luciferase for use in drug and vaccine screening.
RSV is a common respiratory virus infecting most of the population at some point during their life and a major cause of lower respiratory tract infections in infants, children, and the elderly. Currently, neither an RSV vaccine nor effective post-infection therapeutic exists. Cases can often result in hospitalization and sometimes death in these populations. RSV vaccine and therapeutic development has faced challenges including high reversion rate and low immunogenicity. There is an urgent need to develop vaccines that provide a long lasting, highly immunogenic response as well as therapeutics that can be given post-infection.
Researchers at Emory have generated a series of recombinant respiratory syncytial viruses (RSVs) strains to use for vaccine & therapeutic development. Each of these RSVs contains glycoproteins from distinct RSV strains and expresses renilla luciferase. In each, the G and F genes are replaced with that of other RSV strains including A2001/2-20, 2009/91, A1998/12-21 as well as a recombinant RSV expressing only the F protein of A2001/2-20. These strains could prove to be useful in further studies in developing therapeutics and vaccines.
These recombinant strains have been developed and used for vaccine candidate screening in the lab.