Although PREEMPT is intended to protect US military service members and the local communities where they operate, it reflects increasing concern among global health agencies about the potential pandemics emerging from animals to infect humans.
Diseases can arise from domestic and wild animals, including fruit bats, gorillas, pigs, rodents and poultry, and TVG鈥檚 project work will initially focus on Lassa fever in rats and Ebola in non-human primates.
Its novel animal vaccination strategy is based on safe forms of cytomegaloviruses (CMV) that are naturally prevalent in nearly all animals, including humans.
The vaccines are created by modifying these viruses 鈥 inserting small regions of the viral pathogen being targeted (eg. Ebola virus) to stimulate immune responses against the virus prior to possible exposure.
Because the resulting vaccine is CMV-based, it has the potential to reach a large number of animals within a single, defined animal population. Co-evolution with animal species over millions of years has resulted in CMV being highly restricted to a single animal population and to the lack of disease from CMV in these animals 鈥 both of these provide important levels of safety. The CMV vaccine will be rendered even safer by additional modifications. Once a critical mass of animals has been immunized, the zoonotic disease no longer poses a danger to humans.
During experiments conducted exclusively in contained, biosecure facilities, TVG and its partners will explore the safety and efficacy of such scalable countermeasures and delivery mechanisms, while it is also developing techniques to accelerate vaccine development.
As well as the One Health Institute and the Center for Comparative Medicine UC Davis, the principal partners in the project include the University of Idaho. The other key partner institutions involved are; the Heinrich Pette Institute, Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology in Germany; the University of Glasgow; The Institute of Respiratory Health at the University of Western Australia in Australia; the University of Makeni and Ministerial Governmental partners, Sierra Leone.
The vaccines TVG is developing can also be used conventionally, through injections and sprays. Early stage trials show it has the potential to be longer lasting than existing vaccines, with an early application being developed to combat bovine TB.
