Exposing the human virome.

Abstract

As medicine advances, we have come to realize that viral infections early in life can still be playing out in our body decades later, long after the primary infection has ended. New research has indicated that viral infections can precipitate the onset of a diverse array of long-term illnesses, from Alzheimer disease to chronic fatigue syndrome and type 1 diabetes mellitus (1). With that in mind, clinicians are interested in understanding more about viral exposures and how viral infections affect the body over the longterm. “Technologies exist for rapid identification of diverse bacteria,” says Dr. Nima Mosammaparast, Assistant Professor of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine, who cites as an example MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. However, he says, such rapid identification “is not the case for viral diagnostics.” Viral diagnostics search the body for only 1 hypothesized virus at a time, or screen for only limited panels. That is, until now. Researchers at Harvard Medical School, under the guidance of Dr. Steve Elledge, Professor of Genetics and Medicine, have brought together “an ingenious combination of different technologies: DNA microarray, phage display, and high-throughput sequencing,” says Mosammaparast, to assess the entire viral infection history of an organism—including current viral infections the immune system is processing—using just a single drop of blood. By all accounts, the tool, known as VirScan, has the potential to …