A next generation vaccine against human rabies based on a single dose of a chimpanzee adenovirus vector serotype C.

• Published in: PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
• Main Authors: Federico Napolitano, Rossella Merone, Adele Abbate, Virginia Ammendola, Emma Horncastle, Francesca Lanzaro, Marialuisa Esposito, Alessandra Maria Contino, Roberta Sbrocchi, Andrea Sommella, Joshua D Duncan, Jospeh Hinds, Richard A Urbanowicz, Armin Lahm, Stefano Colloca, Antonella Folgori, Jonathan K Ball, Alfredo Nicosia, Benjamin Wizel, Stefania Capone, Alessandra Vitelli
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2020
• Subjects: Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0008459; https://doaj.org/article/ec44ec70e2ee4c7792f2ad27b885aa1f

Rabies, caused by RNA viruses in the Genus Lyssavirus, is the most fatal of all infectious diseases. This neglected zoonosis remains a major public health problem in developing countries, causing the death of an estimated 25,000-159,000 people each year, with more than half of them in children. The high incidence of human rabies in spite of effective vaccines is mainly linked to the lack of compliance with the complicated administration schedule, inadequacies of the community public health system for local administration by the parenteral route and the overall costs of the vaccine. The goal of our work was the development of a simple, affordable and effective vaccine strategy to prevent human rabies virus infection. This next generation vaccine is based on a replication-defective chimpanzee adenovirus vector belonging to group C, ChAd155-RG, which encodes the rabies glycoprotein (G). We demonstrate here that a single dose of this vaccine induces protective efficacy in a murine model of rabies challenge and elicits strong and durable neutralizing antibody responses in vaccinated non-human primates. Importantly, we demonstrate that one dose of a commercial rabies vaccine effectively boosts the neutralizing antibody responses induced by ChAd155-RG in vaccinated monkeys, showing the compatibility of the novel vectored vaccine with the current post-exposure prophylaxis in the event of rabies virus exposure. Finally, we demonstrate that antibodies induced by ChAd155-RG can also neutralize European bat lyssaviruses 1 and 2 (EBLV-1 and EBLV-2) found in bat reservoirs.