Anti-DENV, FHNW School of Life Sciences

Dengue virus (DENV) is a viral pathogen of global health significance: in 390 million cases worldwide, 96 million exhibit clinical symptoms and result in 21,000 deaths. Currently, there are no therapeutic treatments against DENV.

DENV is composed of four similar but serologically different viruses, DENV 1-4. Cross-reactive, neutralising antibodies to all four DENV serotypes may provide an effective passive treatment against severe DENV disease and guide vaccine design. However, a large number of successful antibody candidates remain undiscovered due to the inaccessibility and complexity of the natural immune response: a theoretical repertoire of 10140 potential antibodies.

By applying network analysis and machine learning, large amounts of raw high-throughput sequence data from antibody repertoires can be investigated, resulting in detection of rare, underrepresented antigen-specific clones. This platform has the potential to discover and develop new neutralising antibodies for therapeutic treatment of dengue infection and inform vaccine design.