Medical Campus Experts Gather to Confer about Zika

Original article from: BU Research posted on March 25, 2016. by Barbara Moran

After weeks of Boston University researchers trying to procure a sample of Zika virus, the pathogen linked to microcephaly and other neurological syndromes, the vial finally arrived at BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) on March 22, 2016. NEIDL director Ronald B. Corley, a BU School of Medicine (MED) professor and chair of microbiology, announced the acquisition that day at a Boston University Medical Campus (BUMC) Provost Research Seminar. Zika, like dengue, mumps, and measles, is a Biosafety Level 2 pathogen, defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an agent that poses “moderate hazards to personnel and the environment.”

The sample was of the strain originally isolated in 1947, and it will allow scientists to grow and propagate the virus for study. The 1947 strain is the precursor to the virus causing the current outbreaks in South America and the Caribbean. Because samples of the modern virus are proving difficult to obtain, scientists at NEIDL will begin their work using the 1947 isolate while using published genetic data to make a clone of the modern Zika strain.

“There’s a real need for us to be doing research on this virus. It’s been seen in Boston and will be again,” said John Connor, a MED associate professor of microbiology and a NEIDL researcher, who acquired the Zika sample from the Biodefense and Emerging Infections Research Resources Repository, a supply house for scientists studying infectious diseases. “Having the virus will allow us to ask important questions, like: what is driving the pathogenesis? How is the virus getting across the placental barrier? What is its replication like in mosquitos?” Connor said. “Without understanding the virus, it’s hard to know how to block it.”

 

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