Sudan virus (SUDV) outbreaks in Africa are highly lethal; however, the development and testing of novel antivirals and vaccines for this virus has been limited by a lack of suitable animal models. Non-human primates (NHP) remain the gold standard for modeling filovirus disease, but they are not conducive to screening large numbers of experimental compounds and should only be used to test the most promising candidates. Therefore, other smaller animal models are a valuable asset. We have recently developed a guinea-pig adapted SUDV virus that is lethal in guinea pigs. In our current study, we show that ferrets are susceptible to wild-type SUDV, providing a small animal model to directly study clinical isolates, screen experimental anti-SUDV compounds and potentially study viral transmission.
Keywords: Ebolavirus; Sudan; animal model; characterization; ferrets.