James Crowe

A close cousin of Ebola, the Marburg virus is transmitted by fruit bats and by exposure to body fluids from infected individuals. There currently are no approved treatments or vaccines for MVD, which has a roughly 50% fatality rate.

Developed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, ReVAMPP will support a coordinating center and seven research centers, including VUMC, with a focus on nine virus groups that pose the greatest risk to human health.

VUMC’s antibody collaboration with the DOD goes back to 2018, when the medical center signed a five-year cooperative agreement with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop protective treatments that can be rushed to health care providers within weeks after a viral outbreak.

Enterovirus D68 has caused an increasing number of infections during the past decade and is associated with acute flaccid myelitis, a polio-like condition that mostly affects children and causes sudden weakness and paralysis.

The antibodies may have clinical benefit as antiviral drugs to treat potentially life-threatening infections in elderly and immunosuppressed patients.

The findings reported in the journal Immunity support the development of a monoclonal antibody for prevention and treatment of influenza B — and will help guide efforts to develop a universal influenza vaccine.

The approach, which combines high-performance computing, simulation, machine learning and experimental validation, will help keep antibody drugs up to date in the future against highly variable viruses.