TS-000372 — Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the most frequent cause of lower respiratory disease and hospitalization in infants, but there is currently no vaccine available to prevent or treat RSV disease. Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and The Ohio State University have developed a novel method for designing RSV vaccines using a Vesicular Stomatitis Virus (VSV) vector. VSV is attenuated in humans, so it can infect people and express inserted genes without causing disease. Additionally, VSV grows to high titers in culture, allowing for efficient vaccine production.

TS-000214 — Preventing RSV attachment protein cleavage in vaccine producing cells to increase yield.

TS-000187 — Pneumoviruses include many important human and animal pathogens. Among these viruses, human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and metapneumovirus (MPV) is a leading cause of acute respiratory tract infection in infants and children. Despite major efforts, there is no vaccine to combat these diseases due to the difficulty of constructing a virus that is stable, attenuated and can still provoke an adaptive immune response. Infectious disease experts at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and The Ohio State University have developed a panel of recombinant RSV (rhRSV) and MPV (rhMPV) that are defective in zinc binding activity. The inability of these viruses to bind zinc has rendered them genetically stable and highly attenuated in an animal model. Therefore, our rhRSVs and rhMPVs are excellent vaccine candidates for hMPV.