Hantavirus treatments are coming, but funding is holding them back

Hantavirus treatments are coming, but funding is holding them back

By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron

Several research groups are researching antibody treatments for hantavirus, but lack of funding and urgency mean potential therapies for humans won’t be available for years. Meanwhile, public health officials and clinicians are working to contain an outbreak that began on a cruise ship last month and has so far sickened at least nine people, leading to three deaths. More people are suspected to be infected and, due to the virus’s long incubation period, more cases will almost certainly emerge.

Hantavirus is usually transmitted to humans who are exposed to infected rodents, their feces, or urine. But Andes virus, the type of hantavirus at the center of the current outbreak, is capable of spreading from person to person. There is no specific treatment for hantavirus; rather, clinicians try to support patients and treat symptoms as they appear. This can range from ensuring that infected people rest and hydrate to intubating patients with a severe case in which breathing is impaired, among other actions. Still, there are potential therapies on the horizon that experts say deserve more attention as the epidemic grows.

Tony Schountz, an immunologist at Colorado State University, has studied antibody responses to hantavirus in rodents for years. More recently, his team has focused on finding ways to prevent or treat the disease in humans. Using white blood cells from humans infected with hantavirus, researchers identified antibodies – immune system proteins that can identify and neutralize pathogens – that may be able to fight different strains of the virus.

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“We have animal data, and it would almost certainly work very well, but we don’t have human clinical trial material,” he says. “It’s unfortunate because no one cares about it until an outbreak occurs. Then there’s a brief period of interest and then it goes away.”

After demonstrating the effectiveness of the antibodies in animals, Schountz says the next step would be to produce a cell line that could be used for antibody production on a larger scale. Safety studies and human trials would follow, but this would require significant monetary investments. “That’s where people like us always get stuck,” he says. “We have the leading candidates, but we don’t have the $25 [million] to $50 million to take the next step.

The lack of funding is partly explained by the rarity of hantavirus outbreaks. While infection fatality rates can be as high as 50 percent, depending on the type of virus, as few as 10,000 infections occur worldwide each year, and most of them occur in Asia and Europe, where typical types are less deadly. In the United States, fewer than 1,000 cases have been confirmed between 1993 and 2023.

Besides funding, this scarcity has also posed a problem for researchers.

“Even if you had the funding to do [a clinical trial for hantavirus]Another delay could potentially be “Where is the population to test the effectiveness of this product?” says Jason Botten, a professor at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine who is also studying potential antibody treatments for hantavirus. “It’s quite difficult. In the United States, we only see five cases of infection a year.

Botten’s research identified antibodies that attach to the surface of the virus’s glycoproteins, similar to the spike proteins found on the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID. Once antibodies attach to this protein, they can disrupt the hantavirus’s ability to bind to host cells.

He notes, however, that it can take a decade or more for treatments to go through all the stages before being approved for use in humans. Some past emergencies, such as the COVID pandemic, were exceptions in which wait times were significantly reduced. But hantavirus is not COVID, and even in such an accelerated time frame, any treatment would come too late to treat everyone infected on the cruise ship..

Meanwhile, the remaining passengers of the MV Hondius begin to return to their country of origin. Among them are 18 Americans, 16 of whom are currently at the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Two others are quarantined at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus told a news conference Tuesday that all passengers had left the ship and would be monitored; the ship itself sails to the Netherlands.

Ghebreyesus also noted that 34 passengers who left the ship before the outbreak was confirmed have been identified and located. But because of the virus’s incubation period of up to eight weeks – the time between infection and the appearance of symptoms – more cases are likely.

Botten says he hopes the global attention to hantavirus will resonate with policymakers and research funding groups.

“I hope that, out of this tragedy, one of the good things that comes out of this is that new opportunities will be put in place to try to take some of these therapeutic candidates that our group and others have and advance them in a way that we couldn’t have before.”

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