Special Topic: Latest Advances in Chikungunya Virus Research

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), a mosquito-borne alphavirus in the Togaviridae family, causes acute fever, rash, myalgia, and severe polyarthralgia, and many patients develop long-lasting or recurrent musculoskeletal symptoms post-acute infection. Over the past two decades, CHIKV has re-emerged globally with recurrent outbreaks across Africa, Asia, the Indian Ocean region, Europe, and the Americas, posing a substantial threat to public health. Yet no specific anti-CHIKV agents have been clinical approved or in advanced clinical trials. 

This special topic assembles a series of papers recently published in Virologica Sinica, showcasing cutting‑edge findings in CHIKV research, ranging from antiviral discovery, animal model establishment, and development of biosafe toolkits for compound screening and mechanistic studies to vaccine development. These works collectively enrich our understanding of CHIKV infection mechanisms and facilitate the translation of basic research into antiviral countermeasures and clinical practice.

Articles in This Special Topic

• Recent progress in anti-Chikungunya virus drug discovery: Focus on the viral life cycle and direct-acting antivirals

• Identification and characterization of anti-chikungunya virus compounds using a biosafe toolkit

• Tupaia belangeri better reflects the typical symptoms of Chikungunya virus infection than mice: A comparative study

• Retinoic acid is a translation inhibitor against chikungunya virus both in vitro and in vivo

• Viral kinetics of the Chikungunya virus ESCA-MAL lineage during the 2025 Guangdong outbreak
• Elucidating cellular interactome of chikungunya virus identifies host dependency factors
• An mRNA vaccine encoding Chikungunya virus E2-E1 protein elicits robust neutralizing antibody responses and CTL immune responses