NIAID Research Team Develops 2nd Model of Crimean-Congo Fever

https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/cchf-model?utm_campaign=+60675239&utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term= A NIAID research team has developed an additional nonhuman primate study model for Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF), providing an alternative for development of vaccines and therapeutics. They hope the work, published in npj Vaccines, will lead to a widely available replicating RNA-based vaccine that they are testing against CCHF. The WHO lists CCHF virus as a priority pathogen for development of vaccines. In some outbreaks CCHF has had a case fatality rate up to 40%. Cynomolgus macaques (CM) are the preferred model available to study how the virus causes infection and disease in people. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, CMs were prioritized for other research, and NIAID scientists sought to develop an alternative model using rhesus macaques (RM) to continue vaccine work. RMs infected with CCHFV developed mild-to-moderate disease, similar to the CM model and consistent with disease in humans. The scientists then showed that the experimental vaccine provided six infected RMs with a protective immune response that controlled CCHF virus. The results are consistent with their findings using CMs and support continued advancement of the vaccine into human trials.