New antiviral therapies to treat zika infections : neutralizing monoclonal antibodies and inhibitors of interactions between non-structural proteins

• Main Author: Jia, Huan
• Other Authors: Julien Lescar
• Format: Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Science::Biological sciences::Molecular biology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/137775
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Zika Virus (ZIKV) was discovered in 1947 in Zika forest of Uganda, hence the name. It belongs to the Flaviviridae family along with Yellow Fever Virus, Dengue Virus, West Nile Virus and more than 80 identified viruses. ZIKV contains a single stranded, positive sense RNA with size of 11 kb as its genomic material. ZIKV was not considered as a threaten before outbreaks in the 2000s. Infections are often asymptomatic, and common symptoms include fever, rashes and joint pain. Not much attention had been devoted to ZIKV until the epidemic outbreaks in French Polynesia in 2013 and in Brazil in 2015. From this point, the connection between ZIKV infection and severe neurological complications such as Guillain-Barré and microcephaly were intensively studied. It has also been discovered that transmission pathway for ZIKV was not limited to mosquito as the vector but also sexual and mother-fetus transmission, which made the control of ZIKV infection harder. In February 2016, WHO declared ZIKV a public health emergency. Though the declaration was withdrawn in November 2016, there is still no antiviral drug or vaccine available for ZIKV and more research must be devoted to find therapies against ZIKV infection. For my PhD studies, I addressed the research gaps in therapies for ZIKV infection. I focused on two aspects, firstly neutralizing antibodies against ZIKV that can stop viral infection at its entry stage; and secondly the interactions between non-structural proteins that are important for the replication of viral RNA.