Coronaviruses roadmap:
Control Strategies
Roadmap for the development of disease control strategies for coronaviruses
Download 202410 Draft Coronavirus Disease control research roadmap Final11
Host range
Dependencies
Next steps
Host range
Research Question
- Understand the host range of coronaviruses to determine the factors that allow these viruses to infect different species, including humans
Research Gaps and Challenges
- Understanding which species are susceptible to which coronaviruses
- Cell culture work relies on materials not currently available for wildlife animals, including surveillance, laboratory capacity, sequences, and cells
- Identifying molecular markers to identify spillover
- Identifying factors that will address whether viral-cell binding leads to infection and onward transmission. There is a general lack of understanding of basic science and transmission
- Ethical, economic, and practical concerns, particularly among animal studies
- Exchange of material among laboratories (Nagoya)
- Lacking a basic understanding of the species susceptibility and how it can vary across families or breeds even of animals
- Differentiating between evidence of viral presence and determining the role of any specific host species as a reservoir for onward transmission
- Matching CoV vaccines – are vaccines available seroconverting and protecting against the virus present
- A lack of availability of species-matched vaccines – separate workshop
Solution Routes
- Collaborative surveillance programmes
- Phylogenetic studies to trace the evolution of coronaviruses and their interactions with various host species
- Identify and characterize viral receptors across different host species
- Study cross-species transmission and identify molecular markers of spillover
Dependencies
- Availability of funding, especially for studies to identify reservoirs of transmission and to identify host range
- Addressing ethical and economic concerns for animal experiments that could otherwise be a solution
- Training of pathologists
- Availability of cell culture systems (and other reagents) for different animals (especially wildlife) – addressing surveillance and (BSL3) laboratory capacity
State Of the Art
- Differential susceptibility of SARS-CoV-2 in animals: Evidence of ACE2 host receptor distribution in companion animals, livestock and wildlife by immunohistochemical characterisation – PubMed (nih.gov)
- SARS‐CoV, MERS‐CoV and SARS‐CoV‐2 had involved domestic or wildlife animal as reservoir or as intermediate host
Projects
What activities are planned or underway?
Veterinary Biocontained facility Network for excellence in animal infectiology research and experimentation
Planned Completion date 28/02/2023
Source Countries:
Europe
PARTNERSHIP: RAPID DETECTION OF INCURSIONS OF SARS-COV-2 AND NOVEL CORONAVIRUSES ON TEXAS MEAT AND DAIRY FARMS
Planned Completion date 31/08/2028
Source Countries:
United Kingdom