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Live attenuated influenza virus vaccines by computer-aided rational design

Nature Biotechnology volume 28, pages 723–726 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Despite existing vaccines and enormous efforts in biomedical research, influenza annually claims 250,000–500,000 lives worldwide1, motivating the search for new, more effective vaccines that can be rapidly designed and easily produced. We applied the previously described synthetic attenuated virus engineering (SAVE)2 approach to influenza virus strain A/PR/8/34 to rationally design live attenuated influenza virus vaccine candidates through genome-scale changes in codon-pair bias. As attenuation is based on many hundreds of nucleotide changes across the viral genome, reversion of the attenuated variant to a virulent form is unlikely. Immunization of mice by a single intranasal exposure to codon pair–deoptimized virus conferred protection against subsequent challenge with wild-type (WT) influenza virus. The method can be applied rapidly to any emerging influenza virus in its entirety, an advantage that is especially relevant when dealing with seasonal epidemics and pandemic threats, such as H5N1- or 2009-H1N1 influenza.

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Figure 1: Characterization in tissue culture of synthetic codon pair–deoptimized influenza viruses.
Figure 2: Attenuation of codon pair–deoptimized influenza virus PR83F in BALB/c mice.
Figure 3: Immune responses and protection.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to A. García-Sastre and P. Palese for sharing with us their 8-plasmid system for PR8, antibodies, and information. We thank A. Paul and J. Cello for comments on the manuscript. Supported by National Institutes of Health grants AI075219 and AI15122 (EW) and a TRO-Fusion Award by Stony Brook University (S.M. and S.S.).

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Author notes

  1. J Robert Coleman & Dimitris Papamichail

    Present address: Present addresses: Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, USA (J.R.C.) and Department of Computer Science, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA (D.P.).,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, USA

    Steffen Mueller, J Robert Coleman, Anjaruwee Nimnual, Bruce Futcher & Eckard Wimmer

  2. Department of Computer Science, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, USA

    Dimitris Papamichail, Charles B Ward & Steven Skiena

Authors
  1. Steffen Mueller
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Contributions

S.M. designed and carried out the majority of the study and wrote the paper. J.R.C. and A.N. carried out experiments contributing to Figures 1c and 2. D.P., C.B.W. and S.S. developed computer design and analysis algorithms. B.F. and E.W. contributed to the design of the study and writing of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Steffen Mueller.

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All authors declare they have a patent pending relating to certain aspects of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–3 (PDF 322 kb)

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Mueller, S., Coleman, J., Papamichail, D. et al. Live attenuated influenza virus vaccines by computer-aided rational design. Nat Biotechnol 28, 723–726 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.1636

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