Molecular epidemiology of hantaviruses in Central Europe and antiviral screening against zoonotic viruses causing hemorrhagic fevers

Puumala orthohantavirus (PUUV) and Dobrava-Belgrade orthohantavirus (DOBV), are the most medically important hantaviruses in Central and Western Europe. In this study, a total of 578 small mammals (species C. glareolus, A. agrarius, and A. flavicollis) from Germany, Slovakia, and Czech Republic trapped between the years 2007-2012 were analyzed for the presence of hantavirus RNA. Partial PUUV genome segment sequences were obtained from 51 voles, DOBV from 1 stripped field mouse. Phylogenetic analyses of all three genome segments showed that the newfound PUUV strains from Šumava, Czech Republic, are most closely related to the strains from the neighbouring Bavarian Forests, a known hantavirus disease outbreak region. The Slovak PUUV strains clustered with the sequences from Bohemian and Bavarian Forest only in the M but not S segment analyses. This topological incongruence suggests a segment reassortment event or, as we analyzed only partial sequences, homologous recombination. In the next part of the study, we evaluated a set of novel aryl-piperazine derivates for their antiviral activity against PUUV and Seoul orthohantavirus (SEOV), because it has been not yet published that this group of chemical compounds was ever evaluated against hantaviruses and they showed a great broad-spectrum biological activity against other viruses. We evaluated these aryl-piperazine derivates also against YFV, CVB-5, VV, VSV, and HIV-1. According to papers presenting anti-cancer activity, we decided to evaluate those with higher cytotoxicity also against different types of tumoral cell lines. Some of the aryl-piperazine derivates were active only against CVB-5 and two of them were active against tumoral-cell lines.