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Review
. 2025 Mar 14:16:1521104.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1521104. eCollection 2025.

Insect-specific virus platforms for arbovirus vaccine development

Roy A Hall  1   2 , Wilson Nguyen  3 , Alexander A Khromykh  1   2 , Andreas Suhrbier  2   3
Affiliations
Review

Insect-specific virus platforms for arbovirus vaccine development

Roy A Hall et al. Front Immunol. .

Abstract

Certain insect-specific viruses (ISVs), specifically the mosquito alphaviruses, Eilat and Yada Yada viruses, and orthoflaviviruses, Binjari, Aripo, YN15-283-02 and Chaoyang viruses, have emerged as potential platforms for generation of whole virus vaccines for human and veterinary applications. These ISVs are remarkably tolerant of the substitution of their structural polyproteins with those of alphaviruses and orthoflaviviruses that are pathogenic in humans and/or animals. The resulting ISV-based chimeric vaccines have been evaluated in mouse models and have demonstrated safety and efficacy in non-human primates, crocodiles and pigs. Targets include chikungunya, Venezuelan and eastern equine encephalitis, dengue, Zika, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis and West Nile viruses. ISV-based chimeric vaccines provide authentically folded tertiary and quaternary whole virion particle structures to the immune system, a key feature for induction of protective antibody responses. These vaccines are manufactured in C6/36 or C7-10 mosquito cell lines, where they grow to high titers, but they do not replicate in vertebrate vaccine recipients. This review discusses the progress of these emerging technologies and addresses challenges related to adjuvanting, safety, and manufacturing.

Keywords: Aripo virus; Binjari virus; Chaoyang virus; Eilat virus; YN15-283-02 virus; Yada Yada virus; arbovirus; vaccine.

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Conflict of interest statement

RH and AK are inventors on a patent WO/2018/176075, which covers the BinJV technology. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mosquito-derived ISVs used to generate chimeric virus vaccines against pathogenic alphaviruses and orthoflaviviruses. The mosquito alphaviruses, Eilat virus and Yada Yada virus, and the mosquito orthoflaviruses, Binjari virus, Aripo virus, YN15-283-02 and Chaoyang virus have been used to generate chimeric viruses encoding the structural polyproteins of pathogenic alphaviruses (C-E3-E2-6K-E1) and orthoflaviviruses (CprME), respectively. The chimeric viruses replicate to high titers in mosquito cell lines to produce authentically folded virion particles that can be used as whole-virion vaccines that have provided protective immune responses in a number of animal species. (?) - YN15-283-02 was derived from midge (Culicoides) samples, but the virus was described as a mosquito orthoflavivirus.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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