i3S joins international consortium to develop vaccine against mosquito-borne viruses
Virology, immunology, biotechnology, and public health experts from ten institutions across seven European countries, and the United States, have joined forces to develop an innovative vaccine, named Flavivaccine, over the next three years. This vaccine targets mosquito-borne flaviviruses with epidemic potential, such as dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and West Nile virus. The project, which aims to prepare the EU for potential pandemics, received over eight million euros in funding from the European Union under the HORIZON-RIA - Research and Innovation Actions programme. The i3S is the Portuguese partner in this international consortium and will receive €540,000.
Coordinated by the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in Montpellier, France, specifically by researcher Julien Pompon, this project commenced in 2024. Now, through the European Commission’s “HopON” call, i3S has been invited to join the consortium as an “excellence member” due to the expertise of the group led by Joana Tavares in mosquito-borne infections.
Currently, these diseases (dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and West Nile virus) are estimated to affect approximately 500 thousand people annually and cause over 100,000 deaths worldwide. However, due to global warming, the habitats of the vector mosquitoes (Aedes and Culex) are expanding into Europe and North America, and the risk of flavivirus outbreaks and epidemics has been increasing significantly. Almost the entire human population is currently at risk of flavivirus infection, making it urgent to act preventively and anticipate vaccination strategies before epidemics become increasingly larger and more frequent, and evolve into pandemics.
“Currently, there are no effective vaccines against several mosquito-borne flaviviruses with pandemic potential, and in cases where they do exist (such as the dengue vaccine), they often have limitations in terms of safety, efficacy, or accessibility,” explains the i3S researcher, and Assistant Professor at ICBAS, Joana Tavares, who will lead the Portuguese team. Flavivaccine, she assures, “has the potential to resolve these issues, providing a safe, effective, flexible, and rapidly applicable platform.”
According to Joana Tavares, this vaccine proposal is broad-spectrum and offers an extended and safer preventive approach, acting at the initial stage of infection resulting from contact with the mosquito. Flavivaccine targets components of mosquito saliva. By the end of the project, the researcher guarantees, “we aim to have a vaccine candidate ready to enter clinical development.”
In addition to already known flaviviruses, the international consortium will closely monitor the potential emergence of new, as yet uncharacterised, viruses that could represent future public health threats. “Our project focuses on combating the global threat of flaviviruses, namely dengue, yellow fever, Zika, and West Nile, but the vaccine also has the potential to protect against other flaviviruses, including Japanese encephalitis,” the researcher emphasises.
Furthermore, Joana Tavares adds, “flaviviruses are particularly prone to mutations, which increases their ability to jump from one host species to another. This particularity, combined with extensive animal reservoirs and the expanding habitats of their vectors (such as mosquitoes and ticks), creates ideal conditions for the emergence of new flaviviruses. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor all those we know, and that have the potential to cause outbreaks, and design a vaccination strategy capable of adapting to a vast number of viruses that we do not yet know, but which can rapidly emerge, and lead to epidemics.”
The consolidation of efforts into a single vaccine against multiple mosquito-borne flaviviruses with epidemic potential not only streamlines population protection and reduces the number of hospitalisations but also eases the pressure on healthcare systems, decreasing the economic and social impact of mosquito-borne diseases, whose annual cost exceeds nine billion euros globally.
The i3S is part of this consortium with a team that integrates three research groups: “Host-Parasite Interactions”, led by Joana Tavares, “Gene Regulation”, led by Alexandra Moreira, and “Nanomedicines & Translational Drug Delivery”, led by Bruno Sarmento.