Protection from Hendra virus infection with Canarypox recombinant vaccine

International audienceHendra virus (HeV) is an emerging zoonotic pathogen, which causes severe respiratory illness and encephalitis in humans and horses. Since its first appearance in 1994, spillovers of HeV from its natural reservoir fruit bats occur on almost an annual basis. The high mortality rate in both humans and horses and the wide-ranging reservoir distribution are making HeV a serious public health problem, especially for people exposed to sick horses. This study has aimed to develop an efficient low-cost HeV vaccine for horses based on Canarypox recombinant vector expressing HeV glycoproteins, attachment glycoprotein (G) and fusion protein (F). This vaccine was used to immunise hamsters and then challenged intraperitoneally with HeV 3 weeks later. The higher tested dose of the vaccine efficiently prevented oropharyngeal virus shedding and protected animals from clinical disease and virus-induced mortality. Vaccine induced generation of seroneutralising antibodies and prevented virus-induced histopathological changes and a production of viral RNA and antigens in animal tissues. Interestingly, some vaccinated animals, including those immunised at a lower dose, were protected in the absence of detectable specific antibodies, suggesting the induction of an efficient virus-specific cellular immunity. Finally, ponies immunised using the same vaccination protocol as hamsters developed strong seroneutralising titres against both HeV and closely related Nipah virus, indicating that this vaccine may have the ability to induce cross-protection against Henipavirus infection. These data suggest that Canarypox-based vectors encoding for HeV glycoproteins present very promising new vaccine candidate to prevent infection and shedding of the highly lethal HeV

Chromone: A valid scaffold in medicinal chemistry

Chromones are a group of naturally occurring compounds that are ubiquitous in nature, especially in plants. The word chromone is derived from the Greek word chroma, meaning “color”, which point out that many chromone derivatives can exhibit a diversity of colors.This work was supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Portugal (projects PTDC/QUI-QUI/113687/2009 and PEst-C/QUI/UI0081/2013). A.G. (SFRH/BD/43531/2008) and M.J.M. (SFRH/BD/61262/2009) thank FCT for grants