Which COVID studies pose a biohazard? Lack of clarity hampers research
Original article from Nature by Ewen Callaway and Max Kozlov, 2022
Controversy surrounding a study that involved modifying the SARS-CoV-2 virus has prompted researchers to call for better guidance from funders.
When researchers at Boston University (BU) in Massachusetts inserted a gene from the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 into a strain of the virus from the beginning of the pandemic, they were trying to understand why Omicron causes mild disease.
But the experiments, described in a 14 October preprint1, have ignited a red-hot controversy over what constitutes truly risky SARS-CoV-2 research — especially now that much of the world’s population has some immune protection from the virus and COVID-19 treatments are available.
At issue is whether — and when — researchers modifying SARS-CoV-2 or other deadly pathogens need to keep regulators and funding agencies such as the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) informed about their work, even if the agencies didn’t fund the experiments in question. Studies that make pathogens more transmissible or virulent are sometimes called ‘gain of function’ research.
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The controversy sparked by the BU study highlights “the lack of clarity that people have on exactly what sorts of experiments have benefits that outweigh risks, and who decides how it’s all reviewed”, says Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington.
“Some guidance is really needed,” says Pei-Yong Shi, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, whose team is seeking permission from the NIH to study whether SARS-CoV-2 can develop resistance to antiviral drugs the group is developing.
Click to read the full article in Nature.