Up-to-date role of biologics in the management of respiratory syncytial virus

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a leading cause of severe lower respiratory tract disease in young children and a substantial contributor to respiratory tract disease throughout life. Despite RSV being a high priority for vaccine development, there is currently no safe and effective vaccine available. There are many challenges to developing an RSV vaccine and there are limited antiviral drugs or biologics available for the management of infection. In this article, we review the antiviral treatments, vaccination strategies along with alternative therapies for RSV.

Areas covered

This review is a summary of the current antiviral and RSV vaccination approaches noting strategies and alternative therapies that may prevent or decrease the disease severity in RSV susceptible populations.

Expert opinion

This review discusses anti-RSV strategies given that no safe and efficacious vaccines are available, and therapeutic treatments are limited. Various biologicals that target for RSV are considered for disease intervention, as it is likely that it may be necessary to develop separate vaccines or therapeutics for each at-risk population.

KEYWORDS:

• RSV
• vaccines
• therapeutics
• treatments
• therapies
• prevention

Article highlights

• RSV affects several at-risk populations including neonates and young children, pregnant women, immune compromised, and the elderly.

• There is no safe and effective RSV vaccine available and therapeutic treatments are limited.

• A variety of RSV vaccines are under development including inactivated, live-attenuated, subunit, chimeric, and vectored constructs.

• Several promising vaccine and therapeutic candidates are being evaluated in non-clinical and clinical studies.

• Antibodies against major RSV proteins have shown promise for RSV disease intervention.

Declaration of interest

R Tripp is on the scientific advisory board of Trellis Biosciences, Versatope Therapeutics, Gladiator Biosciences, and Hypercell, Inc. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer Disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial relationships or otherwise to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

We would like to thank the Georgia Research Alliance for supporting R Tripp.