The researchers will work to find strategies capable of preventing and treating the infection and disease triggered by West Nile Virus, for which there is still no clinical approach strategy
The Horizon Europe programme will finance, with a total of 5.7 million euros, a research project in which the Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is participating, and which is coordinated by the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute - a centre jointly promoted by the "la Caixa" Foundation and the Department of Health of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
The project aims to design therapies to limit the impact of West Nile Virus (WNV), an emerging pathogen against which there is currently no treatment or prevention strategy. The BSC, together with IrsiCaixa, the University of Montpellier, the Technische Universitaet Braunschweig, the Kobenhavns Universitet, the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and HIPRA, will work on the development of a safe and effective prophylactic vaccine against WNV that can induce a prolonged immune response over time and that protects the entire population.
Within the same project, called LWNVIVAT (Limiting West Nile Virus Impact by Novel Vaccines And Therapeutics Approaches), the team will design, produce and analyse the efficacy and therapeutic potential of virus-specific antibodies.
"Using computer tools, we can predict which molecules could activate the immune system and generate specific antibodies against the virus to fight it," explained Victor Guallar, a researcher at the BSC, on the supercomputing centre's contribution to the study.
WNV, one of the most widespread pathogens in the world
West Nile Virus, one of the most widespread viruses in the world, uses mosquitoes as a vector for transmission and, although it usually has an asymptomatic course, 1% of cases develop a severe disease that affects the central nervous system and can eventually lead to death. In Spain, the first cases of the disease were detected in 2010. Since then, several outbreaks have been identified across the country, one of them in Andalusia in 2020, which triggered 77 cases of meningitis, eight of them fatal.