Innate Immunity Evasion by Picornaviruses

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About this Research Topic

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Background

The Picornaviridae represent a large family of small, non-enveloped, positive-strand RNA viruses and contains many important human and animal pathogens including enteroviruses (e.g. poliovirus, enterovirus 71, coxsackievirus, and rhinovirus), cardioviruses (e.g. encephalomyocarditis virus and Theiler's virus), hepatitis A virus and foot-and-mouth disease virus. Infection with various picornaviruses may cause encephalitis, febrile rash illnesses (hand-foot-and-mouth disease), aseptic meningitis (the most common acute viral disease of the CNS), hepatitis, conjunctivitis, herpangina, myositis and myocarditis, and the common cold.

The innate immune system provides an early phase defense against invading pathogens before they can establish systemic infection.
Effective innate immune activation is an important factor in controlling viral infections. To successfully eradicate viruses, host innate immunity is activated through diverse pattern recognition receptors which recognizing diverse but conserved viral moieties and initiating an innate immune response, such as trigger the production of type I interferon and pro-inflammatory cytokines, to mediate viral clearance. However, many viruses have developed various strategies to evade the innate immune system and promote viral replication inside the host cells. The long co-evolution of picornaviruses in hosts has promoted the development of effective immune evasion strategies that actively counteract host antiviral responses. For instance,viral proteins 2B, 3A, and 3D of enterovirus 71 have been shown to have moderate inhibitory function of IFN-β promoter activity. Similarly,viral proteins 3C and VP3 of foot-and-mouth disease virus could inhibit IFN signaling cascade and thus evade innate immune responses. Despite the extensive studies carried out to better understand the innate immunity evasion strategy by picornaviruses, there are still numerous questions need to be addressed.

In this Research Topic, we focus on studies connecting the strategies developed by some important picornaviruses (e.g. poliovirus, enterovirus 71, coxsackievirus, encephalomyocarditis virus, hepatitis A virus and foot-and-mouth disease virus) to evade the host immune response and to promote viral replication inside the host cells. The studies on the development of novel prophylactic and therapeutic interventions are also welcome.

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