The Laboratory of Arbovirology, Veterinary Research Institute, Czech Republic, recently developed a new tool that can boost the search for new antiviral agents and detect neutralising antibodies for TBEV. The Group has engineered TBEV with mCherry fluorescent protein to be used in in vitro screening.
The Laboratory of Arbovirology led by Daniel Ruzek TBFVnet partner recently published a paper with great impact on the TBFVnet project. The research presents a new tool that can identify novel antiviral agents and detect neutralising antibodies for tick-borne encephalitis virus.
Tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) is a flavivirus widely spread in large regions of Europe and Asia. This virus can cause a neurological disease known as tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) in humans. It is estimated that 12000 cases of TBE occur annually. Even though the mortality of TBE in Europe is estimated to be less than 1%, many patients show long-term or even permanent consequences known as postencephalitic syndrome. TBE is preventable with vaccines but in several endemic countries, vaccination coverage remains low. Moreover, there are no approved antiviral drugs to treat patients, although several candidate antivirals effective against TBEV have been identified. At present the study of this virus requires laborious secondary approaches to detect the presence of the virus in infected cells and/or in animal models of infection.
The research published by Ruzek and colleagues presents a new strategy to overcome this problem. They have designed and constructed a recombinant protein to be used as a reporter in antiviral screening for TBEV. In particular, they engineered TBEV with a monomeric red fluorescent protein the mCherry protein. This reporter gene is extremely useful in monitoring in vitro infection and its expression remained relatively stable during several passages in cell culture. Thus, the mCherry-TBEV is a unique opportunity for high-throughput screening of antiviral compounds, and the detection of neutralising antibody in cell culture systems.
These findings are extremely important as TBEV is transmitted by ticks of the Ixodes genera: one of the main targets of the TBFVnet project. This study in the framework of such collaborations can accelerate the development of new treatments and diagnostic tools.
The research has been published in Antiviral Research.