How do flaviviruses modulate interferon response

Funded Activity Summary

Several members of the Flaviviridae family are major pathogens of humans including dengue (DEN), yellow fever (YF), tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), Murray valley encephalitis (MVE), Japanese encephalitis (JE), and hepatitis C virus (HCV). An Australian flavivirus Kunjin (KUN), however, appears to be naturally attenuated and does not cause an overt disease in humans. In contrast, genetically and antigenically closely related to KUN, New York strain of West Nile virus (NY WN) has already caused ~500 deaths and over 20,000 registered infections since its emergence in North America in 1999, including 223 deaths and 9122 infections in 2003 alone. Recent studies with DEN indicated that flaviviruses may interfere with early steps of IFN-signalling pathway. The type I Interferon (IFN) response is the first line of defence against viral infections and many viruses have developed different strategies to counteract this response in order to ensure their survival in the infected host. In this grant we seek to exploit our extensive understanding of the molecular biology of KUN virus and the contrasting behaviour of KUN and NY WN viruses to gain an understanding of the role of flavivirus-mediated suppression of host anti-viral IFN response in virus-host relationships and its importance in determining virus virulence.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2005

End Date: 01-01-2007

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $457,500.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Medical Virology

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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Other Keywords

Flavivirus infection | Flavivirus-host interactions | Interfeon modulation | Replicon | Viral pathogenesis | Virus-host interactions | interferon response | signal transduction

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