A New Hantavirus Vaccine Is in the Works
A New Hantavirus Vaccine Is in the Works
一款新型汉坦病毒疫苗正在研发中
US-based pharmaceutical company Moderna confirmed that it has been working on the development of hantavirus vaccines in collaboration with the Vaccine Innovation Center of Korea University College of Medicine (VIC-K). This comes after an outbreak of hantavirus occurred on a Dutch cruise ship that sailed from Argentina and disembarked its passengers and crew in the Canary Islands on May 10. At least three people aboard the MV Hondius died, and several cases were reported as serious.
总部位于美国的制药公司莫德纳（Moderna）证实，该公司正与韩国高丽大学医学院疫苗创新中心（VIC-K）合作开发汉坦病毒疫苗。此前，一艘从阿根廷出发的荷兰游轮于5月10日在加那利群岛让乘客和船员下船，随后船上爆发了汉坦病毒疫情。“MV Hondius”号游轮上至少有三人死亡，另有多例病例被报告病情严重。
Moderna is the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company that perfected messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic. Following the announcement that Moderna was developing a hantavirus vaccine using this same technology, the drugmaker’s stock rose from $49 on May 7 to $55 the next day. But it is important to note that Moderna did not begin work on immunization in the wake of the outbreak at MV Hondius. In fact, the drugmaker undertook this collaborative project with VIC-K in 2023.
莫德纳是一家总部位于马萨诸塞州剑桥市的生物技术公司，曾在新冠疫情期间完善了信使核糖核酸（mRNA）疫苗技术。在宣布将利用该技术开发汉坦病毒疫苗后，该制药公司的股价从5月7日的49美元上涨至次日的55美元。但需要注意的是，莫德纳并非在“MV Hondius”号疫情爆发后才开始这项免疫工作。事实上，该公司早在2023年就与VIC-K启动了这项合作项目。
The Fight for a Vaccine
疫苗之战
The hantavirus outbreak on the high seas has been one of the big international events of recent weeks, which means that many people around the world have only just learned of the existence of this virus—but it is not a newcomer. In fact, hantavirus has been a known pathogen for decades. Transmitted mainly through exposure to the droppings, urine, or saliva of infected rodents, it can cause hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (prevalent in Asia or Europe) or hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (more common in the Americas).
近期海上爆发的汉坦病毒疫情是国际上的重大事件之一，这意味着全球许多人刚刚才了解到这种病毒的存在——但它并非新面孔。事实上，汉坦病毒作为一种已知病原体已经存在了几十年。它主要通过接触受感染啮齿动物的粪便、尿液或唾液传播，可引起肾综合征出血热（在亚洲或欧洲流行）或汉坦病毒肺综合征（在美洲更为常见）。
The wife of actor Gene Hackman may be one of the best known recent people to have died from the latter disease, but it is far from being an exceptional phenomenon. Overall, hantaviruses cause around 50,000 serious and often fatal infections worldwide each year. The so-called New World hantaviruses, such as Andean hantavirus (ANDV), are mostly found in South America and can reach a case fatality rate of up to 40 percent; ANDV is the only hantavirus with documented human-to-human transmission, and just the variant that the World Health Organization identified in MV Hondius.
演员吉恩·哈克曼（Gene Hackman）的妻子可能是近期因后者（汉坦病毒肺综合征）去世的最知名人士之一，但这绝非个例。总体而言，汉坦病毒每年在全球范围内导致约5万例严重且往往致命的感染。所谓的“新世界”汉坦病毒，如安第斯汉坦病毒（ANDV），主要存在于南美洲，其病死率最高可达40%；ANDV是唯一有记录显示可人传人的汉坦病毒，这也正是世界卫生组织在“MV Hondius”号上发现的变异毒株。
There is currently no vaccine to prevent ANDV infection, and the Spanish Society of Immunology emphasizes that “there is no licensed hantavirus vaccine in Europe, the United States, or Latin America.” Treatment strategies are oriented to the viral life cycle, host immunological factors, or clinical management of symptoms.
目前尚无预防ANDV感染的疫苗，西班牙免疫学会强调：“在欧洲、美国或拉丁美洲，目前还没有获得许可的汉坦病毒疫苗。”治疗策略主要针对病毒生命周期、宿主免疫因素或症状的临床管理。
South Korea is the partial exception to this picture. The country reports 300 to 400 cases annually, mainly among young men in their 20s and 30s, and the country’s health authorities have included the pathogen on their list of nine priority threats for future pandemic preparedness. A previous-generation inactivated vaccine called Hantavax exists in Korea, but its limited efficacy and production methodology—it’s derived from animal brain tissue—keep it far from modern standards.
韩国在这一情况中是一个部分例外。该国每年报告300至400例病例，主要集中在20多岁和30多岁的年轻男性中，韩国卫生部门已将该病原体列入未来大流行防范的九大优先威胁名单。韩国目前有一种名为“Hantavax”的上一代灭活疫苗，但其疗效有限，且生产方法（源自动物脑组织）使其远未达到现代标准。
South Korea was the starting point for Moderna’s most advanced collaboration in this field. The biotech firm and VIC-K signed a research and development agreement in September 2023 under the US company’s mRNA Access initiative, a program that provides preclinical-stage mRNA vaccine candidates to academic teams working on emerging or neglected infectious diseases.
韩国是莫德纳在该领域最先进合作的起点。这家生物技术公司与VIC-K于2023年9月签署了一项研发协议，该协议属于美国公司“mRNA Access”计划的一部分，该计划旨在为研究新兴或被忽视传染病的学术团队提供临床前阶段的mRNA疫苗候选物。
The mechanism of the collaboration works like this: The Korean team provides the hantavirus antigenic sequence information and Moderna supplies the corresponding mRNA material. Preliminary results of this early stage research are already available. In February 2025, Park Man-sung’s team from the Department of Microbiology confirmed that experimental doses prevented hantavirus infection in mice.
合作机制如下：韩国团队提供汉坦病毒抗原序列信息，莫德纳提供相应的mRNA材料。这项早期研究的初步结果已经出炉。2025年2月，微生物学系的朴万成（Park Man-sung，音译）团队证实，实验剂量成功预防了小鼠的汉坦病毒感染。
A Vaccine That Could Take Years to Arrive
可能需要数年才能问世的疫苗
The distance between a mouse trial and a licensed vaccine for humans is considerable, especially when there is no longer the sense of urgency of the pandemic or the government support of Operation Warp Speed. The vaccine candidate is still in the preclinical phase, meaning it has not begun human trials and faces major funding and regulatory hurdles before that can happen.
从小鼠试验到获得人类许可的疫苗，中间还有很长的路要走，尤其是在不再有疫情紧迫感或“曲速行动”（Operation Warp Speed）政府支持的情况下。该候选疫苗仍处于临床前阶段，这意味着它尚未开始人体试验，在进入该阶段之前还面临着重大的资金和监管障碍。
In addition, hantaviruses are diverse and have regional variations. Designing a vaccine capable of protecting against multiple strains represents a complex task. Precisely for this reason, this international collaboration seeks to develop a broad-spectrum immunization, effective against more variants than existing vaccines in Asia.
此外，汉坦病毒种类繁多且具有区域差异。设计一种能够预防多种毒株的疫苗是一项复杂的任务。正因如此，这项国际合作旨在开发一种广谱免疫方案，使其比亚洲现有的疫苗对更多变异毒株有效。
The messenger RNA platform, which during the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated its ability to produce effective vaccines in record time, offers particular advantages over conventional methods of vaccine development: It can adapt quickly to new variants of a virus, does not require live pathogen culture in the laboratory, and is the easiest to scale up industrially.
信使核糖核酸（mRNA）平台在新冠疫情期间证明了其能在创纪录时间内生产有效疫苗的能力，与传统的疫苗开发方法相比，它具有独特的优势：它能快速适应病毒的新变种，不需要在实验室中培养活病原体，并且最容易实现工业化规模生产。
These data, added to the outbreak in the Hondius, boosted the company’s shares by almost 20 percent overnight, something that analysts attributed more to the validation of the technological platform than to immediate commercial expectations—especially in a US political context that has become less favorable to mass vaccination campaigns.
这些数据，加上“Hondius”号上的疫情，使该公司股价一夜之间上涨了近20%。分析师认为，这更多是对该技术平台有效性的验证，而非基于即时的商业预期——尤其是在美国政治环境对大规模疫苗接种运动变得不那么友好的背景下。
For now, the WHO ruled out that the Hondius outbreak represents the beginning of an epidemic, and stressed that human-to-human transmission occurs only with very close contact. But the episode reminds us of a lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic: The best time to develop a vaccine against a dangerous virus is before that virus becomes a global emergency.
目前，世卫组织排除了“Hondius”号疫情是流行病开端的可能性，并强调人与人之间的传播仅在非常密切的接触下才会发生。但这一事件提醒我们新冠疫情带来的教训：开发针对危险病毒疫苗的最佳时机，是在该病毒演变成全球紧急情况之前。
It is noteworthy that Moderna is also developing mRNA vaccines against avian influenza, noroviruses, and other pathogens considered priorities for pandemic preparedness. With respect to hantavirus, other agencies are working on vaccine development, most notably the long-standing work of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
值得注意的是，莫德纳也在开发针对禽流感、诺如病毒以及其他被视为大流行防范重点的病原体的mRNA疫苗。在汉坦病毒方面，其他机构也在进行疫苗开发，其中最著名的是美国陆军传染病医学研究所长期开展的相关工作。
This story first appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish. 本文首发于《连线》西班牙语版，由西班牙语翻译而来。