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A team of investigators has made a key discovery that could make a vaccine for the norovirus a reality.
A study published in the journal Immunity describes how a research team discovered an antibody that is capable of broadly inhibiting several strains of pandemic norovirus.
“In order to design an effective vaccine for norovirus, scientists needed to identify a neutralizing antibody that could work against many strains of the virus, as well as strains that will circulate in the future,” Ralph Baric, PhD, an author on the study, said in a press release. “This information can now be used to build better human vaccines.”
Human noroviruses are the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis and account for nearly 1 in 5 cases of diarrhea and vomiting. Estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that noroviruses cause approximately 200,000 deaths per year, which mostly occur in infants, children, and the elderly.
Although there are more than 30 genotypes of human norovirus, approximately 60% of outbreaks are caused by GII.4 genotype strains, which have caused periodic human pandemics.
The study team comprised investigators from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of Texas at Austin, and the National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center. The team says that the most important discovery of their research is that a human antibody can bind to a conserved region of the virus that is common in the various strains, potentially neutralizing all GII.4 strains of norovirus that exist in nature.
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