Flu season

Abstract

> EMBO reports (ER) In 2012, two publications by Ron Fouchier and Yoshihiro Kawaoka about increasing the transmissibility of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu virus created a public debate about flu research and biosecurity. Since Fouchier announced that he would repeat such gain‐of‐function experiments with the H7N9 bird flu virus, he was widely criticised for what some regard as conducting irresponsible high‐risk experiments in the middle of Rotterdam. What are the potential benefits of these experiments, and do you think Fouchier should continue with his gain‐of‐function experiments on bird flu viruses? > Jeffery Taubenberger (JT) There are no simple answers, but it's worth thinking about this historically. People use the term gain‐of‐function as if this were a newly invented concept. But gain‐of‐function is what virologists have done for a hundred years. If you take an isolate of human influenza from a nasal or a throat swab and you grow it in a fertilized chicken egg, it can select for a clone that is able to grow in a chicken egg, which is not a native host. Mutations can rapidly accumulate in the virus, and you have now gained a function. It's the same thing with animal passage, so adapting a human or a chicken influenza virus to a ferret is something that people have done for eighty years. The concern I think comes from several aspects. The H5N1 virus, which has been circulating since 1996, is very pathogenic for chickens and it has caused human infections with a theoretical case fatality rate of approaching 60%. The concern is about gain‐of‐function experiments that could lead to more mammalian transmissibility of these highly pathogenic viruses. We know that a zoonotically‐derived animal influenza virus has to adapt to humans who are generally not susceptible to avian, equine, or canine influenza viruses. If we're ever actually …