Five-year, international project to target viruses through antibody therapies

A new, $22 million grant-driven project will lead an international consortium of scientists to develop antibody-based means of combating Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV), Andes virus (ANDV), Sin Nombre virus (SNV) and the Puumula virus (PUUV) over the next five years.

The effort, led by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), is targeting viruses currently lacking in approved vaccines or treatments. Building on research into the 2013-2016 West African Ebola outbreak, researchers hope to find new means of countering viral agents with high, national threats of infection. Their project is being called the Prometheus Center for Excellence in Translational Research.

All their targets are viruses that spread from animals to people. CCHFV is a stand-alone, as the only virus on the list carried by ticks. The others are what are called hantaviruses — viruses spread by rats. All but PUUV have been dubbed high risks by NIAID.

Previous Ebola research lends hope that clones of unique parent cells could be used to make monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to neutralize viral threats.

“Prometheus will leverage this proven approach for rapid mAb discovery and evaluation to develop prophylactics or therapeutics for two other important groups of emerging viruses with potential to cause severe disease outbreaks in humans,” Kartik Chandran, principal investigator on the grant and professor of microbiology & immunology at Einstein, said. “With our expanded group of partners, we have the capability to go from initial antibody discovery and evaluation all the way to drug development, animal studies, clinical trials, and licensing.”

The effort will be divided in two, with Einstein co-leading one of the projects under John Dye, chief of viral immunology at USAMRIID. A second effort will be undertaken by Zachary Bornholdt, director of antibody discovery at Mapp Biopharmaceuticals and Jason McLellan, associate professor of molecular biosciences at The University of Texas at Austin. The first will identify promising antiviral antibodies and study how they block viruses from entering host cells, while the second will focus on engineering antigens, defining antibody targets and tweaking antibodies to maximize antiviral efforts.

Einstein is also being joined on this project by such institutions as the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Mapp Biopharmaceutical, Inc., The University of Texas at Austin, and biotech company Adimab, LLC.