Scientists identify effective and novel mechanisms to block chikungunya virus

Scientists looking at the antiviral mechanisms of two previously identified human monoclonal antibodies have found they potently inhibit chikungunya virus (CHIKV) at multiple stages of infection. Funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, scientists at Blood Systems Research Institute (BSRI) in San Francisco and the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that neutralizing antibodies that engage epitopes including residue E2-W64 are highly potent at inhibiting the virus in mice, due to the importance of E2-W64 in pathogenicity. Furthermore, these antibodies prevent CHIKV from both entering and exiting cells, whereas prior studies of neutralizing antibodies to CHIKV and multiple other classes of viruses have focused on the capacity to block viruses from entering a cell. The research was published in Cell Reports, an open-access journal from Cell Press. Dr. Graham Simmons, associate investigator at BSRI and the lead researcher on the project, together with Dr. Jing Jin, a...