EmerVir · Experimental assessment of wildlife viruses emergence potential through systematic characterization of human cell tropism
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2023-11-15 → 2025-11-14
- EU contribution
- €165,313
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Experimental assessment of wildlife viruses emergence potential through systematic characterization of human cell tropism
Emerging viral diseases such as COVID-19, Ebola, Zika, or avian influenza have demonstrated the profound health, societal, and economic impacts that viruses can have. While large-scale sequencing efforts continue to uncover thousands of viruses circulating in wildlife, a critical gap remains: for most of these viruses, it is unknown whether they can infect human cells at all and, if they can, which mechanisms and host factors enable replication in human cells. This lack of functional information severely limits our capacity to assess zoonotic risk, prioritise surveillance efforts, and design early intervention strategies. Among the viruses described in wildlife, enveloped RNA viruses represent a particularly high threat to humans, as the majority of known human-infective viruses belong to this group. Viral entry into host cells is a decisive early step in infection and a key determinant of host range, yet it remains poorly characterised for the vast majority of animal viruses. The overall objective of the EmerVir project was therefore to establish a systematic, high-throughput experimental framework to evaluate the ability of wildlife enveloped RNA viruses to enter human cells, identify the cellular factors that govern this process, and determine how viral evolution can modulate human cell tropism. By generating large-scale functional data across multiple viral families and human cell types, the project aimed to provide new conceptual and practical tools for pandemic preparedness.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Emerging viruses pose a tremendous threat to human health and economy, as dramatically shown by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Most emerging viruses are zoonotic, meaning that they can be transmitted between animal species and humans. Although it was estimated that more than one million viral species exist in the two main reservoirs of zoonotic viruses (mammals and birds), only a few hundred are known to infect humans. This means that the majority of wildlife viral species will likely not cause major outbreaks in the human population, but that many potentially human-infective viruses are lurking in nature. Although large-scale metagenomic studies allowed the identification of thousands of new viral species, functional data, including their ability to infect human cells, are often missing. Previous work has examined the human cell tropism of a fraction of wildlife viruses, but no systematic analysis of the factors involved in viral entry has been undertaken. In this proposal, we will use synthetic biology, experimental virology and viral evolution using a large number of human cell lines to implement a high throughput characterization of wildlife viruses' tropism. We will first test whether wildlife viruses envelopes from diverse viral families can mediate infection of a large panel of human cell lines. Comparing available transcriptomic data of susceptible and non-susceptible cell lines, we will identify novel wildlife viruses host entry factors. Finally, using experimental evolution, we will investigate how viral envelope natural selection and diversification impact the use of these newly identified entry determinants. Overall, this project should improve epidemic preparedness by identifying viral species or variants at higher risk to infect humans, as well as host factors participating to viral entry, which are potential targets for the development of antivirals.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITAT DE VALENCIA · ValenciaCoordinatorSpain
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101104880
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e52796521e&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union