Engineering Mammalian Cell Lines to Support Human Noravirus and Related Enteric Viruses

Ralph Tripp from the University of Georgia in the U.S. and Carl Kirkwood of Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia will engineer mammalian cell lines for the development of vaccines and therapies against human noravirus and related enteric viruses. Noravirus is highly contagious and causes acute gastroenteritis, which can be serious in young children and the elderly. However, studying the virus and developing much needed new therapies has been difficult because mammalian cells are unable to support replication of the virus and grow in culture. They will perform genome-wide screens on two mammalian cell lines using small interfering RNA libraries to identify and remove the genes that block viral replication. After validation, the candidate genes will be modified using so-called CRISPR gene editing to generate stable cell lines for studying viral biology and developing new treatments.