A new step towards a vaccine against the "most deadly" viruses

For the first time, immunologists have obtained a clear picture of a glycoprotein, a protein that plays an important role in causing rabies. This will help create a more effective vaccine against the deadly disease.

And the scientific journal "Science Advance" published the study, which was conducted by American and French scientists, noting that the American company Sapphire, in cooperation with a team led by Dr. Hervé Buri at the French "Pasteur" Institute, paved the way for designing a better vaccine for rabies.

She added that scientists have obtained a high-resolution image of the glycoprotein of the rabies virus in its three-dimensional form, which it takes before infecting human cells.

Lead study author Heather Calloway of the La Khoi Institute of Immunology paired the glycoprotein with a human antibody, which helped determine where the viral structure was attacked. Next, the team took a 3-D image of the glycoprotein using state-of-the-art equipment, a cold electron microscope.

Thanks to this, scientists were able to see many important features of the protein, which were not known before. In particular, two key parts of viral structure, called fusion peptides, have been depicted for the first time as they appear in real life. These two sequences attach the bottom glycoprotein to the viral membrane and are projected into the target cell during infection. The researchers suggest that if the vaccine is targeted specifically at this site, its effect will be longer.