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July 17, 2002

U.S. IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"Live-Attenuated Virus Vaccines for Respiratory Syncytial and Parainfluenza Viruses: Applications of Reverse Genetics" Journal of Clinical Investigation (www.jci.org) (07/02/02) Vol. 110, No. 1, P. 21; Murphy, Brian R.; Collins, Peter L.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the top cause of severe viral respiratory disease in the young, with the virus responsible for between 73,000 and 126,000 hospitalizations of infants under one year of age in the United States alone.  Should an RSV vaccine be developed, it will have to deal with two distinct subgroups of the virus, called A and B, which are differentiated by their antigenic and sequence dimorphism.  In addition, the human parainfluenza viruses (PIVs) 1, 2, and 3 initiate severe respiratory tract diseases, and do not cross-neutralize or cross-protect, yet are responsible for an estimated 23 percent of hospitalizations of infants.  Because the molecular virology of RSV and the three PIVs is well known, they are good candidates for vaccine development through the process of reverse genetics--especially because the genetic maps of all four viruses are similar, encoding similar groups of proteins. Should researchers pursue the possibility of a live-attenuated vaccine, reverse genetics will provide information about attenuated viruses by different methods and their variation from the wild-type parent, of which there are several in development. In addition, through reverse genetics, the development of a vaccine for RSV B has been facilitated by categorizing the attenuating mutations for vaccine candidates for RSV A and replacing antigens to match the specific virus.

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