Vaccine Development for Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome

• Published in: Viruses Vol. 13; no. 4; p. 627
• Main Author: Yoshikawa, Tomoki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 06.04.2021; MDPI
• Subjects: Age; animal model; Animal models; Animals; Body temperature; Cats; Disease; DNA vaccines; Domestication; Ebola virus; Fatalities; ferrets; Fever; Genotype & phenotype; Glycoproteins; Huaiyangshan banyangvirus; Infections; Laboratories; live vaccines; mice; Mortality; Review; RNA polymerase; severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome; Thrombocytopenia; vaccine; Vaccine development; Vaccines; Vectors (Biology); Viruses; Young adults; zoonoses; animal model; severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome; vaccine
• DOI: 10.3390/v13040627
• ISSN: 1999-4915

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS), which is caused by SFTS virus (SFTSV), is a tick-borne emerging zoonosis with a high case-fatality rate. At present, there is no approved SFTS vaccine, although the development of a vaccine would be one of the best strategies for preventing SFTS. This article focused on studies aimed at establishing small animal models of SFTS that are indispensable for evaluating vaccine candidates, developing these vaccine candidates, and establishing more practical animal models for evaluation. Innate immune-deficient mouse models, a hamster model, an immunocompetent ferret model and a cat model have been developed for SFTS. Several vaccine candidates for SFTS have been developed, and their efficacy has been confirmed using these animal models. The candidates consist of live-attenuated virus-based, viral vector-based, or DNA-based vaccines. SFTS vaccines are expected to be used for humans and companion dogs and cats. Hence for practical use, the vaccine candidates should be evaluated for efficacy using not only nonhuman primates but also dogs and cats. There is no practical nonhuman primate model of SFTS; however, the cat model is available to evaluate the efficacy of these candidate SFTS vaccines on domesticated animals.