This post was originally published on this site.
A more than 15-year collaboration between Baylor College of Medicine and Houston Zoo led to a breakthrough in the fight against one of the deadliest diseases in young Asian elephants.
Two papers published in July are the first peer-reviewed evidence of the effectiveness of the mRNA vaccine for elephants against elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV).
The first study looked at a multi-antigen mRNA vaccine in nine Asian elephants at five institutions, including Houston Zoo. It showed that the vaccine generated a sustained immune response against key viral proteins.
The other study gave researchers evidence of clinical protection from EEHV in two vaccinated juvenile elephants at Cincinnati Zoo.
Dr. Paul D. Ling, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine’s Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology, said the Houston Zoo approached him years ago after they had six young elephants die from EEHV.
“They were kind of at a crossroads,” Ling said.
When they first asked him for help, Ling said he thought about it for a few days.
“I came down one morning, I looked at my wife and I said, ‘Who wouldn’t want to help save baby elephants?'” Ling said in an interview with Straight Arrow.
Ling, at the time, worked on human herpes viruses, including the ones that cause shingles and another that causes Epstein-Barr Virus. He told Straight Arrow he was able to use some of the knowledge he had from human herpes cases to inform the research on EEHV.
“It turns out herpes viruses have a lot of common themes with the way in which they’re transmitted, the way in which they infect and remain latent for periods of time, and some of the diseases that they cause,” Ling explained. “There’s a lot of common themes amongst them, so we were able to leverage that information for both in terms of thinking about a lot of the diagnostics and things that we developed early on, but then what we utilize to generate this first round of a vaccine that we’ve implemented in the elephants.”
How the vaccine works
Houston Zoo Asian elephant Tess was the first of her species to ever receive the experimental EEHV mRNA vaccine.
From there, Dr. Christine Molter of the Houston Zoo said, several other elephants in the Houston Zoo herd, as well as elephants at other institutions, were given the vaccination, too.
“Since that time, we were able to track their seroconversion, how well their bodies create antibodies to the vaccine — antibodies that are at a protective level,” Molter said.
What scientists are trying to do with the vaccine is not necessarily stop infection altogether, but give them a “boost” in their immunity to prevent clinical disease or lethality, Ling explained.
When young elephants are born, they get antibodies from their mothers in utero. These antibodies can be protective if the elephants are exposed to the virus early on. But if they don’t, these antibodies can wane over time, Ling said.
Once they get down to a certain level, the elephants are particularly vulnerable to getting infected for the first time — and they don’t handle the virus well.
“So they either get really sick, or they’ll get really sick and die,” Ling said. “So the idea behind the vaccine is to reconstitute the immunity that they lost.”
For instance, in the case of the two elephants at the Cincinnati Zoo, Ling said they had no antibodies left from their mother, and were about six years old when they got vaccinated — making them particularly vulnerable.
They both responded well to the vaccine in terms of their immune response, and then came a “natural challenge event” where the elephants got infected from their herd mates.
“They actually had the most optimal situation happen, which was they had a very low-level infection,” Ling said. “Which, if you weren’t looking, you wouldn’t have even known that they were infected, and they recovered without any kind of clinical disease whatsoever, and did just fine. So that was the most optimal sort of circumstance. That’s the way we would hope that the vaccine would work.”
‘Less sleepless nights’
The vaccine gives Houston Zoo confidence and security in feeling comfortable that its elephants will be protected from EEHV, Molter said.
“For us, that means less worry, less sleepless nights, less nights wringing our hands nervously if there is something wrong with the blood work, because we know that they’ve got protection, and that they’re going to be OK,” Molter said. “That’s huge for a herd. It’s huge for individual elephants, and it’s huge for the people that care for them.”
In a world where elephants’ habitats are changing, and scientists are still learning about the virus, “the vaccine really comes in and bridges the gap between maternal and self antibodies to make sure that that elephant is protected for the rest of their life,” Molter added.
“Ultimately, our goal is to not only protect elephants in human care, but those in the wild that are suffering from the same virus, the same disease,” she said.
By the end of the year, Ling says, 22 Asian elephants will be vaccinated at nine different U.S. institutions. And it won’t stop there.
“Of course, we had a lot of inquiries from people in other countries. So we’re working actively now on exporting this vaccine for use in India,” Ling said. “We’re looking at Thailand. We’re looking at exporting it to Australia and Canada, and potentially the U.K., and we’ve had some conversations with some other places.”
Round out your reading
- What does low water at the Hoover Dam mean for power in the American West?
- Could GLP-1 drugs become the first longevity medications? Scientists think it’s possible.
- ChatGPT told him he wouldn’t face charges. Then came the arrest warrant.
- How one small city built a second act as a bio hub inside empty cigarette factories.
- If permanent Daylight Saving Time is so popular, why is it dead in the Senate?