What is it about?
Chemokines are molecules that orchestrate the movement of leukocytes. The chemokine receptor CCR5 not only do so, being important for the recruitment of mononuclear leukocytes, but is involved in the development of dengue infection and disease.
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Why is it important?
CCR5 has long being implicated in pathogenesis (disease development) of viral diseases, such as AIDS, herpes or West Nile encephalitis. We discovered that dengue virus depends on CCR5 to replicate and to cause disease, as blockade of CCR5 by different means resulted in less virus and in no disease. Thus, compounds that block CCR5 could protect people from dengue.
Perspectives
We haven't look into the mechanism of why dengue virus depends on CCR5 for replication. Our experiments showed that CCR5 is not required for entry. I guess that pathways involving GRK2 and beta arrestin could be interesting to check. Also, it would be nice to test CCR5 inhibitors in DENV infection of human cells.
Rafael Elias Marques
Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Energia e Materiais
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Dengue virus requires the CC-chemokine receptor CCR5 for replication and infection development, Immunology, June 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/imm.12476.
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