Boosting Flavivirus Research: A Pandengue Net Initiative

Dear Colleagues,

The editorial team of the journal Viruses would like to announce the forthcoming Special Issue entitled: "Boosting Flavivirus Research: A Pandengue Net initiative" guest-edited by Dr. Carlos A. Sariol (University of Puerto Rico-Medical Sciences Campus, San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA), Dr. Mariana Leguia (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) and Dr. Daniela Weiskopf (La Jolla Institute for Immunology, Division of Vaccine Discovery).

Since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic in 2020, of the activities of many researchers (virologists, immunologists, epidemiologists, molecular biologists, among others) have been directed towards this disease. As a consequence, most of the active research in different fields, including flaviviruses research, was put on a “technical hold”. This Special Issue is being put out in collaboration with the Pan-American Dengue Research Network and aims to “boost” the flavivirus research field by offering a dynamic and rapid platform to publish ongoing research work in the field.

DENVs are considered the most important emerging human arboviruses, with worldwide distribution in the tropics, causing an estimated 100–400 million infections each year, 750,000 cases of severe dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome (DHF/DSS), and up to 75,000 deaths every year. According to the WHO, severe dengue is a leading cause of serious illness and death among children in some Asian and Latin American countries, and recently for the USA where after an absence of 65 years DENV has re-established an autochthonous transmission cycle in Florida. The field of dengue research has shown considerable expansion in the last decade, with a licensed vaccine in the market and a number of new vaccine candidates; a better understanding of disease determinants; and new developments in diagnosis, prognosis and investigational treatments. However, there is currently no specific treatment and new effective vaccines are urgently needed. Additionally, for this Special Issue, the scientific scope will be expanded to cover Zika, chikungunya and Mayaro, arboviruses that have recently re-emerged in the Americas with devastating effects for human public health.

In addition, despite of many years of research, there are still multiple open key questions related to complex immune interaction among flaviviruses, including the humoral, T cells and innate immune response. Without doubt those areas need to be explored in order to design effective therapeutics and vaccine approaches.

The Pan-American Dengue Research Network (http://www.pandenguenet.org) is an initiative to gather researchers across the Americas every two years to discuss their recent advancements in the field, communicate this information to the scientific community in the region, foster collaborations among groups, and discuss future research strategies that will further strengthen the field. During these meetings, cutting-edge topics on dengue are presented and discussed. Additionally, for this meeting the scientific scope will be expanded to cover Zika, chikungunya and Mayaro. The collection of reviews and original research papers in this Special Issue is intended to summarize and showcase current research on arboviruses by investigators from the Americas and around the world.

Dr. Carlos A. Sariol
Dr. Mariana Leguia
Dr. Daniela Weiskopf
Guest Editors

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