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?
Differential susceptibility of SARS-CoV-2 in animals : Evidence of ACE2 host receptor distribution in companion animals, livestock and wildlife by immunohistochemical characterisation
Planned Completion date 26/07/2021
Participating Country(s):
Netherlands
Veterinary Biocontained facility Network for excellence in animal infectiology research and experimentation
Planned Completion date 28/02/2023
Participating Country(s):
Europe