Low cost, scalable interventions to combat chikungunya fever

Chikungunya fever is a painful condition mainly characterised by fever and joint pain but also headache, muscle pain, joint swelling, and rash.

The aetiologic agent, chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is transmitted by mosquitos of the Aedesgenus and is prevalent in tropical regions.

Although mortality is low (approximately 0.1%), the burden of disease in low- and middle-income countries is high: The virus is endemic in the majority of the countries on the DAC list of low-income countries. Currently, no vaccine or antiviral treatments are available.

In this proposal we plan to explore two promising strategies to develop low-cost, scalable interventions to treat this disease.

Our first aim is to use the combined expertise of the McInerney and Tomar groups to identify and develop compound(s) that target an essential and conserved alphavirus interaction with host molecules.

Our research has identified an Achilles’ heel of the Old-World alphaviruses and our recent data suggests that targeting this complex is feasible and expected to be broadly anti-alphaviral.

In a second approach, we propose to develop, screen and test, camelid-derived single domain antibody fragments against the CHIKV spike complex and test them in a virus replication inhibition assays in vitro and in a mouse model for alphavirus disease.

Although both approaches are at the experimental stage, both represent potentially low cost and very scalable strategies to combat chikungunya fever in low income countries.