A $4.2 million Programme Project Grant renewal from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in September 2024 will fund efforts by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine to develop a cytomegalovirus (CMV) vaccine. The vaccine is intended to prevent the transmission of cytomegalovirus from mother to baby during pregnancy. The grant could be extended for five years and $20.4 million to enable research to accelerate the vaccine’s development.
Protecting the foetus
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the most common congenital infection worldwide, but Dr Sallie Permar, chair of the Department of Paediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine, hopes to find a vaccine that prevents transmission of the virus to the developing foetus. Around 1 in 200 babies is born with CMV, with one-quarter of them experiencing long-lasting effects such as hearing loss, microcephaly, developmental delays, and seizures. Dr Permar compares the effects to those recognised in the Zika epidemic, commenting that CMV “affects ten times as many infants”.
“If we could eliminate this terrible congenital infection, we would give more babies the chance to achieve their full potential in life.”
A model of transmission
More than half of all adults live with CMV, but if it is acquired for the first time during pregnancy, the mother has a 30% to 40% chance of passing the virus to her baby. As it is “challenging” to design a clinical trial large enough to assess the effectiveness of a CMV vaccine to protect the foetus, Dr Permar has created a collaborative network. With researchers at the University of California Davis Primate Centre, Tulane University, and Oregon Health Sciences University (OSHU) and Primate Centre, Dr Permar has developed a non-human primate model of congenital CMV transmission to test vaccines.
“This work requires a cadre of multidisciplinary virologists, immunologists, pathologists, physicians, and veterinary scientists who all care deeply about eliminating this devastating childhood infection through vaccination.”
Tackling “immune-evading tactics”
Dr Permar states that CMV has “multiple strategies” for evading host immunity; the virus conceals itself in a person’s cells and producing factors to catch host antibodies, disable common killer T cells, and cause confusion for the antiviral immune response. With the latest grant renewal, the researchers will explore approaches for “thwarting these viral immune-evading tactics”.
The team will use weakened viruses and some of the virus’ own protein factors as antigens to induce the production of antibodies against “CMV’s evasive manoeuvres”. They hope to have a prototype for a vaccine in five years, at which point they could advise the industry on vaccines that are currently in clinical trials.
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