Das Sayan, Narayanan Anoop, Wang Anqi, Moustafa Ibrahim M, Cho Sung Hyun, Mitzel Dana, Jose Joyce, Hafenstein Susan L
Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
Sci Adv. 2025 Jul 11;11(28):eadw7700. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adw7700. Epub 2025 Jul 9.
Powassan virus (POWV) is an emerging tick-borne flavivirus for which no vaccine or antiviral treatment exists. The incidence of human infections of POWV in North America has been increasing because of the expanding distribution of the tick vector that transmits POWV to humans. To mitigate the dangers of handling a risk group 3 human pathogen, a chimeric virus was constructed from the genetic backbone of a yellow fever virus vaccine strain 17D (YFV-17D) and the external structural proteins of POWV lineage II. The chimera had a comparable phenotype as POWV. The atomic resolution of yellow fever virus-Powassan virus chimera (yPOWV) structure was built without ambiguity, revealing surface glycans and lipid pocket factors. The similarity to other flavivirus structures and the phenotype similar to YFV-17D suggest that there could be future potential as a vaccine candidate.
波瓦桑病毒（POWV）是一种新出现的蜱传黄病毒，目前尚无疫苗或抗病毒治疗方法。由于传播POWV给人类的蜱虫媒介分布范围不断扩大，北美地区人类感染POWV的发病率一直在上升。为降低处理风险等级为3的人类病原体的危险性，构建了一种嵌合病毒，其基因骨架来自黄热病病毒疫苗株17D（YFV-17D），外部结构蛋白来自POWV谱系II。该嵌合体具有与POWV相当的表型。黄热病病毒-波瓦桑病毒嵌合体（yPOWV）结构的原子分辨率清晰构建，揭示了表面聚糖和脂质口袋因子。与其他黄病毒结构的相似性以及与YFV-17D相似的表型表明，它未来有可能成为候选疫苗。
