Recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus vector vaccines for WHO blueprint priority pathogens

Fathi, Anahita; Dahlke, Christine; Addo, Marylyn M.

In response, WHO initiated a Blueprint list of priority diseases to accelerate Research & Development efforts for pathogens that bear a particularly high potential to cause epidemics while no or limited specific countermeasures are available and may, therefore, cause future public health emergencies. 4 WHO's R&D blueprint, composed and regularly updated by an international committee of experts, identifies and defines priority pathogens on the basis of a number of criteria weighted by their relative importance. Major prioritization criteria focus on whether and how the pathogen is transmitted to humans, the extent of medical countermeasures available, and the severity and case-fatality rate of the corresponding disease. Other factors such as potential societal impacts and the evolutionary potential of the pathogen are also taken into account. 5 The current Blueprint, reviewed in February 2018, identified as present priority diseases Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), Ebola Viral Disease (EVD) and Marburg Viral Disease (MVD), Lassa Fever, MERS and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Nipah and henipaviral diseases, Rift Valley Fever (RVF), Zika disease as well as "disease X", ayet unknowndisease. 6 In this context, the detailed characterization and assessment of vaccine platforms capable of being applied to swiftly develop vaccines against a variety of pathogens are of utmost importance. The ideal vaccine candidate for outbreak scenarios should be able to be manufactured in a rapid and scalable fashion, be safe, induce both strong cellular and humoral immune responses and rapidly confer long-term immunity after a single immunization. Viral vector vaccines can express a variety of heterologous antigens and, therefore, represent ideal vaccine platforms for developing novel vaccine candidates. As such, vaccine candidates based on the Rhabdovirdae family have shown to feature many of these properties.