W19-025: Generating an attenuated Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP) Vaccine by inactivating EndoU (EveryCat Health Foundation grant final report)
Principal investigators: Dr. Gary Whittaker, Cornell University; Dr. Susan Baker, Loyola University
Feline Infectious Peritonitis is a serious, generally fatal disease of cats. Until very recently no effective treatment has existed, and even now those treatments are generally unavailable to the public. The disease is caused by mutation of a commonly occurring coronavirus, and production of an effective vaccine against FIPV may negate or minimize the need for therapies. While previous attempts to create a vaccine for this virus have been made, none have been successful. Recent evidence has suggested that altering the “EndoU” coronavirus protein produces an inactive virus able to generate strong immune response in other (non feline) coronavirus models.
The purpose of this research was to generate an EndoU mutant of FIPV and evaluate its properties on interferon production in vitro.
The authors of this research were able to generate feline cell lines with disrupted type I interferon signaling to propagate coronavirus. This work has been published. Work has also been initiated in propagating FIPV on this and other cell lines.
Work on cloning and genetically modifying FIPV to generate EndoU mutants is ongoing at this point.
See Also:
O’Brien, A., Mettelman, R.C. Volk, A., André, N.M., Whittaker, G.R. and Baker, S.C (2018). Characterizing replication kinetics and plaque production of type I feline infectious peritonitis virus in three feline cell lines. Virology 525: 1-9.
Mettelman, R.C., O’Brien, A., Whittaker, G.R. and Baker, S.C. (2019). Generating and evaluating type I interferon receptor-deficient and feline TMPRSS2-expressing cells for propagating serotype I feline infectious peritonitis virus. Virology 537:226-236.