A reconstruction of dengue virus serotype 2 in complex with a human antibody fragmentEMBL-EBI, WANWISA DEJNIRATTISAI ET AL.A study of antibodies from the blood of patients infected with dengue virus has revealed a group of antibodies that recognize a unique envelope dimer epitope (EDE), which spans two protein subunits on the viral surface. Antibodies to EDE effectively neutralized all four dengue serotypes in cell culture experiments, an international team led by researchers at Imperial College London reported today (December 15) in Nature Immunology. The finding could guide strategies to develop a broadly protective vaccine against dengue, a mosquito-borne virus that infects about 400 million people per year.
Although only about 25 percent of people infected with dengue develop symptoms, the disease can lead to severe, and potentially lethal, hemorrhagic fever. Dengue is a growing problem in both developing and developed countries. Designing vaccines has been a long-standing challenge because of the unstable structure of the virus and the differences among its four serotypes.
“The shell of the virus is made up of a rather beautiful array of these envelope proteins all stacked together,” study coauthor Gavin Screaton of Imperial College London said during a press briefing. “The antibody actually recognizes the junction between two of these proteins, so it will only recognize the protein when it’s made on the virus.”
Screaton and his colleagues amplified sequences encoding the antibodies from the B ...
