{"id":6811,"date":"2022-10-21T11:50:37","date_gmt":"2022-10-21T15:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/?p=6811"},"modified":"2022-10-24T11:53:58","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T15:53:58","slug":"which-covid-studies-pose-a-biohazard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/2022\/10\/which-covid-studies-pose-a-biohazard\/","title":{"rendered":"Which COVID studies pose a biohazard? Lack of clarity hampers research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Original article from Nature<\/em> by Ewen Callaway and Max Kozlov<\/strong>. October 21<\/span><\/span><\/span>, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Controversy surrounding a study that involved modifying the SARS-CoV-2 virus has prompted researchers to call for better guidance from funders.<\/span><\/h3>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But the experiments, described in a 14 October preprint1<\/a><\/sup>, have ignited a red-hot controversy over what constitutes truly risky SARS-CoV-2 research \u2014 especially now that much of the world\u2019s population has some immune protection from the virus and COVID-19 treatments are available.<\/p>\n

At issue is whether \u2014 and when \u2014 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\u2019t fund the experiments in question. Studies that make pathogens more transmissible or virulent are sometimes called \u2018gain of function\u2019 research.<\/p>\n

\n

Omicron boosters could arm you against variants that don’t yet exist<\/p>\n<\/article>\n

The controversy sparked by the BU study highlights \u201cthe lack of clarity that people have on exactly what sorts of experiments have benefits that outweigh risks, and who decides how it\u2019s all reviewed\u201d, says Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome guidance is really needed,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Click to read the full article in Nature<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original article from Nature by Ewen Callaway and Max Kozlov….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1859,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1298,3082],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1859"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6811"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6813,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6811\/revisions\/6813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}