Recently, The Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Immunity and Metabolism of our University published a research paper entitled "Cell binding tropism of rat hepatitis E virus is a pivotal determinant of its zoonotic transmission to humans" in PNAS. Xuzhou Medical University is the first unit of the paper. Professor Wenshi Wang, Professor Kuiyang Zheng of Xuzhou Medical University, Professor Xiucheng Pan of Xuzhou Medical University affiliated hospital, and Professor Siddharth Sridhar of the University of Hong Kong are the corresponding authors. Professor Hongbo Guo and graduate student Jiaqi Xu of the School of Basic Medical Sciences of Xuzhou Medical University, and Jianwen Situ, PhD student at the University of Hong Kong, are the co-first authors. The research work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the "Jiebangguashuai" project of Xuzhou Medical University.
HepatitisEvirus (HEV) is the most common cause of acute viral hepatitis worldwide, infecting 20 million people each year and resulting in about 60,000 deaths. Traditionally, HEVs that cause human infections are HEV-A and those that infect rats are HEV-C1. However, since 2018, the number of human cases of viral hepatitis caused by rat HEV (HEV-C1) has been reported in multiple countries and regions, and the number of cases has been increasing, and two pediatric cases of acute hepatitis of unknown cause caused by rat HEV infection have been detected in Spain. This greatly increases concerns about the public health risk posed by rat HEV. Therefore, it is very important to study the molecular mechanism of rat HEV transhost transmission for the prevention and control of rat HEV.
In order to reveal the molecular mechanism of cross-host transmission of rat HEV to humans, the potential of different HEV species to induce zoonotic infection risk and the characteristics of immune cross-reaction were systematically analyzed, and it was confirmed that the cell binding tendency of rat HEV is the key molecular mechanism of cross-host transmission to induce human infection. In this study, the antigen map and serological cross-reaction between different HEV species were systematically demonstrated, which provided valuable strategies for the development of species-specific HEV diagnosis and laid an important foundation for the effective prevention and control of HEV infection.
In recent years, the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Immunity and Metabolism has focused on researching pathogen infection and host immune metabolism, addressing major national and regional needs through interdisciplinary approaches. The laboratory's research findings have been published in prestigious international academic journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Hepatology, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Microbiome, Cancer Research, Cell Reports Medicine, Theranostics, Gut Microbes, JHEP Reports, and others. Additionally, the laboratory has filed or been granted more than 10 national invention patents.
Original link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39467126/
