Fig. 1. CCHF VRP platform requires single-round replication and antigen specificity for efficacy.
a Study timeline: Ifnar-/- mice were vaccinated with a UV-inactivated CCHF VRP inoculum (n = 5) 28 days prior to challenge or with a non-specific LASV VRP inoculum (n = 5) 3 days prior to challenge. Vaccines were administered subcutaneously (SC) with a dose of 1.00 × 105 TCID50/animal. All mice were challenged SC with 100 TCID50 CCHFV strain Turkey04 and followed to their terminal endpoint (endpoint criteria described in Methods). After challenge, b weight loss (% change from baseline at -1 dpi), clinical score (described in Methods), and survival were recorded daily for each animal. Weight and survival data from historical controls are represented by dashed gray lines. Tissues (liver, spleen, ovary/testis, kidney, lung, heart, eye, brain, whole blood) and oropharyngeal and rectal swabs were collected from terminal animals and evaluated by RT-qPCR to quantify levels of CCHFV RNA using a primer/probe set specific for the NP ORF of the CCHFV S gene segment. Individual animals are represented. Bars and error bars indicate mean ± standard error of the mean (SEM).