Under the CSIR-CDRI Virus Mission Program, our laboratory is acting as a key laboratory for the Designing and Development of Antiviral Strategies for Japanese Encephalitis (JE). JE is a viral brain infection which is caused by Japanese Encephalitis Virus (JEV). It is mosquito-borne flavivirus and a leading viral agent of acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) in South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions of the globe. JEV exposing >3 billion people to risks of infection, where it prominently causes morbidity and mortality as well as life-time disability. Since its outbreak in India in 2005, our country has reported highest number of JEV infection every year among all of the 24 South-Asian affected countries. Despite the availability of a few licensed vaccines, more than 70,000 cases of JE occur annually across the globe with ~30% case-fatality rate.
JE affects the Central Nervous System including the brain and spinal cord. Patients of JEV show early symptoms such as fever, headache, and vomiting which normally relates with other flaviviral diseases. However, in a short span of time, these symptoms may become severe like disorientation, seizures and coma which culminates into lifetime disabilities.
Currently, there are no specific antivirals available to mitigate the JEV infection, only supportive cares are provided to stabilize the patient. To combat this deadliest disease, our group is focusing on the designing of a novel antiviral compound/drug(s) against JEV, where we are aiming to design and develop combinational therapeutics which could inhibit the virus at both the viral entry level and on viral replication complex, as depicted in the figure.
Besides above, our laboratory has keen interest in the repurposing of broad-spectrum antivirals against JEV, where we are evaluating combinations of nontoxic FDA approved chemical library or Phyto-molecules against JEV in our established in vitro and in vivo assay systems
Figure: Pictorial diagram representing the Japanese Encephalitis Virus (JEV) pathogenesis and potential drug targets.
Other than therapeutic development, our group is actively involved in the designing of a subunit vaccine candidate against JEV which would have inherent safety potential. The available live-attenuated vaccines for JEV have proved efficient in preventing JE with some reports of probable adverse events including from hypersensitivity reactions to the rare cases of terrible effects on CNS (encephalomyelitis and seizures). We at CDRI with the collaboration of Dr. Navin Khanna’s group (ICGEB, New Delhi) are determined to develop a broad spectrum, safe, cost-effective designer subunit-based vaccine candidate against JEV. This vaccine candidate is aimed to have customized specific neutralizing epitopes of virus that would induce long-lasting humoral as well as cell-mediated immune responses with the inherent safety potential.