Preventing infections of the highly puke-ogenic virus - norovirus

Summary In this project we aim to utilise a vaccine development platform to generate virus-like particle of norovirus and determine their effectiveness in priming and providing a protective immune response to infection. The project will involve the design and production of the virus-like particles to be used in vaccination regimes.

Project Details

Norovirus infections results in a highly acute disease with symptoms that include explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting. It is an infection that affects 700 million people each year and you are likely to get 4-5 infections over your lifetime. Yet there is no treatment or prevention options against this significant pathogen as efforts have been hampered by the inability to effectively cultivate the virus in laboratory conditions. In this project we aim to utilise a vaccine development platform to generate virus-like particle of norovirus and determine their effectiveness in priming and providing a protective immune response to infection. The project will involve the design and production of the virus-like particles to be used in vaccination regimes. Subsequently, the immune response generated to these particles will be assessed. We will also generate virus-like particles to the related mouse norovirus, providing us with an effective model to assess neutralisation and immune correlates, and a tool for us to isolate reactive memory B cells for antibody isolation.