(ANSA) – ROME, AUGUST 27 – A different strain of virus from the one in the 2022 epidemic, which particularly affects the little ones, and it is not clear how much it can respond to available vaccines. A research team from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), coordinated by two Italians, Professor Alessandro Sette, co-director of the LJI Center for Vaccine Innovation, and Professor Alba Grifoni, specialized in immunology, is studying the peculiarities of the mutated “clade 1” mpox virus, the one at the origin of the ongoing monkeypox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The “clade I” strain of the mpox virus (unlike the 2022 outbreak which was derived from a “clade II” virus), as explained in an in-depth study published on the portal of the research center based at the University of San Diego, California, “typically causes more severe cases and deaths than clade II, also appears to be more transmissible through skin-to-skin contact and has spread more widely in people younger than 15 years old” (while the 2022 mpox outbreak was observed mainly in men who have sex with men). “The clade I mpox virus is completely new, so the situation is evolving rapidly,” says Professor Alessandro Sette, co-director of the LJI Center for Vaccine Innovation. “The new viral behavior could be a game-changer and affect a broader range of patients, including more children, women, and older patients,” Sette adds. “We will look at immune responses in different groups and see if there are differences based on age or sex.”
In a previous study in Cell Host & Microbe in 2022, Sette and Grifoni found that the current Jynneos and Modified Vaccinia Ankara (Mva) vaccines can train T cells to recognize vulnerable targets (called epitopes) on the original mpox virus, “but these vaccines are not limiting the spread of infection,” Grifoni says. It’s unclear how different this virus is from the 2022 strain, or where the differences in the viral proteins are. What is certain is that the exact genome sequences for the new mpox strain are becoming available and will be analyzed soon. Hopefully, unlike Sars-Cov-2, mpox is a large DNA virus, meaning it is unlikely to mutate in many areas. “We expect that most of the T cell epitopes will be intact in the new strain as well,” Sette concludes. (ANSA).
2024-08-27 16:20:36