Why the study?
While rotavirus incidence has been controlled with vaccines, highly effective norovirus vaccines are unavailable, prompting investigation into rotavirus as an expression vector for a combined vaccine.
Recombinant rotaviruses can be engineered to express norovirus capsid proteins, providing a potential platform for a combined rotavirus-norovirus vaccine, though genetic stability of larger inserts remains a challenge.
RV vector feasibility for NoV antigens supports combined vaccine pursuit; leaves open clinical efficacy and safety.
Rotavirus (RV) and norovirus (NoV) are the two most important causes of acute viral gastroenteritis (AGE) in infants and young children. While the incidence of RV AGE has been brought under control in many countries through the introduction of universal mass vaccination with live attenuated RV vaccines, similar highly effective NoV vaccines are not available. To pursue the development of a combined RV-NoV vaccine, we examined the potential of using RV as an expression vector of all or portions of the NoV capsid protein VP1. Our results showed that by replacing the NSP3 open reading frame in RV genome segment 7 RNA with a coding cassette for NSP3, a 2A stop-restart translation element, and VP1, recombinant RVs can be generated that express NoV capsid proteins. These findings raise the possibility of developing new generations of RV-based combination vaccines that provide protection against a second enteric pathogen, such as NoV.
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Philip et al. (2022) studied this question.
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