Science for You: New possibilities for Zika treatment

Purdue’s Zika code-cracking team – Richard Kuhn and Michael Rossmann ― who were the first in the world to discover the mature and immature structures of the virus, have now identified an antibody that attaches to the virus, which could aid in the development of antiviral medications.

The new findings also suggest the antibody might be especially effective because a lower concentration than expected is needed to inhibit a key mechanism of infection, making it more potent than previous antibodies studied. The research was performed by a team from Purdue University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the Washington University School of Medicine.

The human antibody was isolated by the Vanderbilt and Washington University researchers, who reported their findings earlier this year. Those findings showed that the antibody, which was isolated from a person previously infected with Zika virus, neutralizes Zika strains that belong to African, Asian and American lineages and is able to reduce fetal infection and death in mice.

“However, until now what remained unknown was the mechanism of neutralization of Zika infection by the antibody and the structural basis for neutralization,” says Michael Rossmann, Purdue’s Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences.

The findings were reported March 16 in the journal Nature Communications.

This color-coded image depicts the surface view of the Zika virus bound to fragments of a human antibody, shown as red knobs. (Purdue University image/S. Saif Hasan)

The research team was led by Rossmann and Richard Kuhn, both professors in Purdue’s Department of Biological Sciences, and senior postdoctoral scientist S. Saif Hasan. Research to isolate the antibody was led by James E. Crowe Jr., a professor of pediatrics, pathology, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt, and Michael S. Diamond, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor at Washington University.

“Given the severity of the symptoms caused by Zika infection in humans, it is crucial to understand the immune response elicited by the infection to develop neutralizing anti-Zika therapies,” Rossmann says. “In contrast to other flaviviruses that are spread mainly by insects, recent evidence suggests that Zika can be transmitted sexually and from mother to child in addition to transmission by mosquitoes.”

A YouTube video is available at https://youtu.be/DQast8epdOw.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

– Emil Venere, Purdue News Service, http://bit.ly/2pIXxuW