BSL-4 Lab Worker - Photo Credit –USAMRIID
# 7219
Ed Yong, writing for Nature News, has the details on a new H5N1 study that – like the Fouchier and Kawaoka studies from 2012 – involved the creation of a more transmissible bird flu virus.
A voluntary moratorium on`gain of function’ studies – those seeking to enhance the transmissibility and/or virulence of the H5N1 virus – went into effect in January of 2012 after biosecurity concerns were raised by a number of experts. (see Scientists Announced a 60 Day Moratorium On Some Types of H5N1 Research).
Objections were raised initially after the 2011 ESWI Influenza Conference in Malta, where Dutch researcher Ron Fouchier revealed that he’d created a more `transmissible’ form of the H5N1 virus (see Debra MacKenzie’s New Scientist: Five Easy Mutations).
That discovery, along with similar news coming from Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a highly respected virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, set alarm bells ringing in the biosecurity community.
The voluntary moratorium was later extended beyond two months to give time for international debate, and the formulation of safety rules.
The research papers by Fouchier and Kawaoka on the genetic changes needed to provide H5N1 with enhanced transmissibility have now been published, and the moratorium was lifted earlier this year.
As the following 3 minute NIAID Video explains, pandemic viruses can emerge when two (or more) flu viruses swap genetic material and create a new, hybrid strain.
The stated goal of these controversial experiments is to figure out in the lab which reassortments are likely to produce a human transmissible strain, before nature figures it out in the wild.
Today the Journal Science has published a new study where researchers in China reassorted the genes from the H5N1 and 2009 H1N1 flu viruses, creating 127 new `hybrids’.
Of these, five showed an increased ability to transmit between guinea pigs, suggesting that they would transmit well among humans as well.
Lead author Professor Chen Hualan of the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute has been heavily involved over the past few weeks into the investigation of the H7N9 outbreak (see Study: Source Identification Of H7N9), and was the author of an EID Journal study from 2001 on H5N1 in wild birds (see EID Journal: H5N1 Branching Out).
First a link to the paper and abstract, then a jump to Ed Yong’s article.
H5N1 Hybrid Viruses Bearing 2009/H1N1 Virus Genes Transmit in Guinea Pigs by Respiratory Droplet
Ying Zhang,Qianyi Zhang, Huihui Kong, Yongping Jiang, Yuwei Gao, Guohua Deng, Jianzhong Shi, Guobin Tian, Liling Liu, Jinxiong Liu, Yuntao Guan, Zhigao Bu, Hualan Chen
Nature | News
Scientists create hybrid flu that can go airborne
H5N1 virus with genes from H1N1 can spread through the air between mammals.
02 May 2013
As the world is transfixed by a new H7N9 bird flu virus spreading through China, a study reminds us that a different avian influenza — H5N1 — still poses a pandemic threat.
A team of scientists in China has created hybrid viruses by mixing genes from H5N1 and the H1N1 strain behind the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and showed that some of the hybrids can spread through the air between guinea pigs. The results are published in Science1.
Despite the lifting of the research moratorium, these types of experiments are still viewed as controversial – and potentially dangerous - by a number of experts.
For more on this debate, you may wish to revisit:
The Furor Over H5N1 Research Continues
The Biosecurity Debate On H5N1 Research
Referral: Laurie Garrett On The Bird Flu Research Controversy
The Bird Flu Research Debate Continues
