Measles breakthrough could be beginning of end for virus

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

A major breakthrough in the battle to beat measles has been made by scientists working to develop new vaccines.

American researchers have discovered exactly how a neutralizing antibody blocks the highly contagious virus.

They explained that when the measles virus meets a human cell, the viral machinery unfolds in just the right way to reveal key pieces that let it fuse itself into the host cell membrane.

Once the fusion process is complete, the host cell is a "goner" and it belongs to the virus.

Scientists at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) in California are working to develop new measles vaccines and therapeutics that stop the fusion process.

They recently harnessed an imaging technique called cryo-electron microscopy to show - in unprecedented detail - how a powerful antibody can neutralize the virus before it completes the fusion process.

LJI Professor Erica Ollmann Saphire said: "What’s exciting about this study is that we’ve captured snapshots of the fusion process in action.

“The series of images is like a flip book where we see snapshots along the way of the fusion protein unfolding, but then we see the antibody locking it together before it can complete the last stage in the fusion process.

"We think other antibodies against other viruses will do the same thing but have not been imaged like this before.”

The research team says their "promising" discovery, published in the journal Science , may prove important beyond measles as it is just one member of the larger paramyxovirus family, which also includes the deadly Nipah virus.

Nipah virus is known for being less contagious but causing a much higher mortality rate than measles.

Study first author Dr. Dawid Zyla, an LJI postdoctoral researcher, said: "What we learn about the fusion process can be medically relevant for Nipah, parainfluenza viruses, and Hendra virus.

"These are all viruses with pandemic potential."

Measles is a highly contagious, airborne disease that tends to strike children the hardest.

Despite extensive vaccine efforts, the virus remains a major health threat.

There were 1,603 suspected measles cases in England and Wales in 2023, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) - a sharp rise from 735 cases in 2022 and 360 in 2021.

England has seen large clusters of measles across a number of regions since autumn 2023.

Measles caused around 136,000 deaths around the world in 2022, with the victims mostly children under age five who were unvaccinated or under-vaccinated.

Saphire said: "Measles causes more childhood deaths than any other vaccine-preventable disease, and it's also one of the most infectious viruses known."

Dr. Zyla added: "The current vaccine works well, but it cannot be taken by pregnant people or people with compromised immune systems."

There is no specific treatment for measles, so researchers are looking for antibodies to use as an emergency treatment to prevent severe disease.

To better understand how the measles virus fuses with cells, the LJI team turned to an antibody called mAb 77.

Researchers have found that mAb 77 targets the measles fusion glycoprotein, the piece of viral machinery measles uses to enter human cells via a specialized process called fusion.

The LJI team investigated exactly how the antibody combats the virus.

They found mAb 77 arrests the virus in the middle of the fusion process.

Now that they know how mAb 77 works, the research team hopes the antibody could be used as part of a treatment "cocktail" to protect people against measles or to treat patients with active measles infection.

In a follow-up experiment, they showed that mAb 77 provided "significant" protection against measles in cotton rat models of measles virus infection.

Now the team wants to study different antibodies against measles.

Dr. Zyla added: "We'd like to stop fusion at different points in the process and investigate other therapeutic opportunities."

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