REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Viral Immunology
This article is part of the Research TopicHost-directed antiviral strategies: Repurposing dsRNA viruses for broad-spectrum pandemic preparednessView all articles
Host-Targeted Oral Avian Vaccine Virus Demonstrates Broad Antiviral Activity and Safety in Patients
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Probability and Statistics, Alfred Renyi Institute of Mathematics, Budapest, Hungary
- 2George Washington University, Washington DC, United States
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The absence of an immediately deployable, broad-spectrum antiviral remains a critical vulnerability in global pandemic preparedness. Host-directed agents that activate innate immunity offer a pathogen-agnostic strategy, yet no such therapy is currently stockpiled or authorized for emergency use. Infectious Bursal Disease Virus (IBDV)—a non-replicating avian dsRNA vaccine virus with a 60-year safety record in poultry—induces robust interferon responses in mammals and has been administered orally in marmosets and more than 50 human patients with hepatitis A, B, C, SARS-CoV-2, and herpes zoster infections. These observations include a randomized phase II trial in 84 acute HBV/HCV patients. Although the evidence base is limited, the consistency of clinical responses and absence of serious safety signals justify renewed scientific examination. This review synthesizes the mechanistic rationale, comparative advantages over synthetic Pattern Recognition Receptor (PRR) agonists, clinical observations, One Health implications, and regulatory precedents relevant to evaluating IBDV as a temporary, compassionate-use antiviral during pandemics while the reverse-engineered human candidate (IBDV-R903/78) progresses through formal development. The goal is not to endorse clinical deployment, but to initiate a rigorous, multidisciplinary debate on whether an established veterinary dsRNA vaccine virus could serve as an off-the-shelf host-directed live viral adjuvant therapy in future public health emergencies. (words: 201)
Keywords: Broad-spectrum antiviral, Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), Host-directed therapy, Infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV), interferon response
Received: 03 Dec 2025; Accepted: 06 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Bakacs and Chumakov. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tibor Bakacs
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