BU Researchers Join $100 Million Effort to Fight Future Deadly Pathogens
Original article from The Brink by Andrew Thurston. February 17, 2023
Scientists from NEIDL and medical and dental schools part of Howard Hughes Medical Institute push to get ahead of pandemics like COVID-19
The next pandemic could already be lurking somewhere, and scientists want to make sure the world is ready when it springs. As we slowly exit the current COVID-19 pandemic, Boston University researchers are joining a $100 million effort to advance our understanding of dangerous pathogens—and help spur new ways to defeat or at least contain them. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s (HHMI) Emerging Pathogens Initiative, which is pulling in 70 scientists from 29 organizations, will include 7 BU researchers, who will be part of teams working on the next generation of RNA-based antiviral therapies and investigating microscopic pathogenic parasites called protozoa. BU’s share of the funding will be $16 million.
“We are optimistic that this initiative will help these scientists develop new, untested approaches that can reveal how pathogens work and how the human immune system responds to pathogen infection,” says Leslie Vosshall, the institute’s vice president and chief scientific officer. “With this program, we hope to gain some of the knowledge and tools we need to get a scientific head start on future epidemics.”
COVID-19 has shown how important that push will be. According to the World Health Organization, the pandemic has caused close to seven million deaths globally, while the International Monetary Fund has forecast the cost to the worldwide economy will exceed $12.5 trillion.
Among those contributing to the HHMI initiative is BU National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) researcher Elke Mühlberger, an expert on highly pathogenic viruses like Ebola and Marburg. Her lab began studying SARS-CoV-2 back in March 2020 and recently started investigating other viruses of concern, including Nipah. Mühlberger is teaming up with BU scientists Daniel Cifuentes, Anthony Griffiths, and Gustavo Mostoslavsky to focus on “merging the technologies of RNA biology and enhanced biosafety to create next generation broad spectrum RNA-based antiviral therapies,” according to HHMI’s announcement of the initiative. RNA, ribonucleic acid, helps our bodies make proteins, translating the messages encoded in our DNA. But RNA also fuels the viruses that cause Ebola, measles, polio, influenza, rabies, hepatitis C, even the common cold.
“The goal is to come up with mechanisms and strategies, to use the knowledge that we gain through this project to block these viruses, to find antiviral countermeasures,” says Mühlberger, a BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine professor of microbiology and NEIDL director of integrated science services. “Almost all emerging viruses are RNA viruses, so these viruses are a real threat to public health, and we have to understand them better to come up with therapeutic interventions.”
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