Establishment of West Nile Virus infection models of mosquitoes

• Grant number: 25/00179-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate (Direct)
• Start date: March 01, 2025
• End date: February 28, 2029
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology - Biology and Physiology of Microorganisms
• Principal Investigator: Edison Luiz Durigon
• Grantee: Camila Caceres Paredes
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas (ICB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 23/07746-0 - Drug discovery against human viral infectious diseases, AP.TEM

Abstract

Brazil is one of the countries strongly haunted by parasitic diseases caused by viral pathogens. These infections severely affect public health and welfare in a wide part of the tropical world. Existing drug therapies are based on old and often very toxic active substances and reports on developing resistance of pathogens are increasing. The search for new chemical entities with anti-pathogenetic activity and new mechanisms of action is thus a highly urgent task. Flaviviruses are important human pathogens and include dengue virus (DENV), West Nile virus (WNV), Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), Yellow fever virus (YFV) and Zika virus (ZIKV) which are transmitted by mosquitoes and cause viral haemorrhagic fever and encephalitis in humans (Petersen et al., 2013, Flórez-Álvarez et al., 2022). In this doctoral project a WNV transgenically modified virus strain that expresses green-fluorescent protein (GFP) will be used to establish a mosquito-WNV infections model at BSL3.