Utrecht University and Intravacc team up to develop a new way to vaccinate against enteroviruses

The group of enteroviruses includes many important human pathogens for humans and animals. These include the well-known poliovirus, causing polio, rhinovirus, causing the common cold, and newly emerging viruses. Some of the emerging viruses that we know as Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71), group A coxsackieviruses (CV-A) CV-A16, CV-A10 and CV-A6 cause hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD). Recent HFMD outbreaks in China, South-East Asia, USA, and Europe (France and Spain) were accompanied with severe neurological symptoms. Thereby, there is a great need for an innovative multivalent HFMD vaccine.

Vaccines have been of imminent importance to prevent and combat viral diseases such as poliomyelitis. These vaccines induce the production of neutralising antibodies that target epitopes at the outer surface of virus particles. In this project, they will explore the feasibility of enterovirus particles with a modified outer surface as a multivalent HFMD vaccine. Thereby, a single type of particle can potentially elicit a protective immune response to multiple viruses in one go. This circumvents the troublesome production of some of the enteroviruses, something that has been stopping us from developing vaccines. They will test these new vaccines for their ability to elicit a potent immune response.

If successful, they will further develop this strategy to develop a multivalent HMFD vaccine. Importantly, application of these platform.

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