2015/06/22

Marie Skłodowska-Curie action awarded to carry out structure-function studies on Schmallenberg virus in the Abrescia Lab.

Bilbao, June 15th, 2015: Virologist Dr. Hani Boshra has been awarded with an Individual Fellowship Marie Skłodowska-Curie action (MSCA) to study Schmallenberg virus (SV) in the group of Dr. Nicola GA Abrescia at the Structural Biology Unit at the CIC bioGUNE (Bilbao).

SV is a pathogenic virus of the Bunyaviridae family (genus Orthobunyavirus) that has been discovered in European livestock 3 years ago. Since then, it has been found that this virus is associated with disease in sheep, goats and cattle across Europe. In livestock, the symptoms associated with the disease include stillbirths and malformations in newborn animals. The presence of the virus in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands as well as Russia, has shown that this disease is a fast spreading threat to the European livestock industry, and has the potential to cause significant economic impact across the continent. Furthermore, due to high volumes in international trade of livestock, the potential of this disease to spread beyond Europe poses another potential threat to the industry.

We propose to study Schmallenberg virus, in order to understand the basic mechanisms of transmission and immunogenicity. We combine functional with structural studies and intend on using the data acquired during the project to create low-cost diagnostic and vaccine prototypes for the rapid detection and containment of Schmallenberg disease in Europe.

This project is led by Nicola GA Abrescia, Principal Investigator and Ikerbasque Research Professor at the Structural Biology Unit at the CIC bioGUNE (Bilbao), in collaboration with Alejandro Brun, Principal Investigator at the CISA-INIA (Madrid) and Vacunek S.A. (Bilbao).