Bat ‘nightclubs’ may be the key to solving the next pandemic

Science Daily  February 20, 2024 Myotis bats are exceptionally species rich and have evolved viral tolerance. They also exhibit swarming, a cryptic behavior where large, multi-species assemblages gather for mating, which has been hypothesized to promote interspecific hybridization. An international team of researchers (USA – Texas A&M, Switzerland, France, Ireland) analysed 60 Old World Myotis genomes to resolve the coevolution of genome architecture and their unusual antiviral tolerance. They demonstrated an extensive history of introgressive hybridization that has replaced the species phylogeny across 17%−93% of the genome except for pericentromeric regions of macrochromosomes. They enriched introgression tracts on microchromosome regions […]

Scientists develop AI-based tracking and early-warning system for viral pandemics

Science Daily  July 21, 2023 An international team of researchers (USA – Scripps Research Institute, China) developed a machine learning approach using Gaussian process-based spatial covariance (SCV) to track the impact of spatial-temporal mutational events driving host-pathogen balance in biology. They showed how SCV could be applied to understanding the response of evolving covariant relationships linking the variant pattern of virus spread to pathology for the entire SARS-CoV-2 genome on a daily basis. The GP-based SCV relationships in conjunction with genome-wide co-occurrence analysis provided an early warning anomaly detection (EWAD) system for the emergence of variants of concern (VOCs). EWAD […]

Here’s How The Next 5 Years Might Look: Scientists Outline 3 Likely Pandemic Outcomes

Science Alert  May 16, 2022 A new report from the International Science Council (ISC), written by a panel of 20 experts on public health, virology, economics, behavioral science, ethics, and sociology, has laid out three scenarios that could occur by 2027 and possible actions the world can take to minimize the pandemic’s impact going forward. Scenario 1 – Globally the coronavirus won’t disappear, but its spread will become far more manageable ; Scenario 2 – By 2027, the ISC report finds the most likely scenario is “an exacerbation of global inequalities; Scenario 3 – As geopolitical tensions grow protectionist policies […]

Researchers Discover Evidence of a Major Coronavirus Epidemic 20,000 Years Ago

SciTech Daily  October 4, 2021 An international team of researchers (Australia, USA – University of Arizona, UC San Francisco) applied evolutionary analyses to human genomic datasets to recover selection events involving tens of human genes that interact with coronaviruses that likely started more than 20,000 years ago. Multiple lines of functional evidence support an ancient viral selective pressure, and East Asia is the geographical origin of several modern coronavirus epidemics. An arms race with an ancient coronavirus, or with a different virus that happened to use similar interactions as coronaviruses with human hosts, may thus have taken place in ancestral East […]

World leaders call for international pandemic treaty

Outbreakobservatory.org  April 8, 2021 Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, national leaders, academic experts, and policymakers have stressed the need for a coordinated, international effort to mitigate the harmful health and economic consequences of the deadly virus. In an open letter world leaders joined WHO to call for an international treaty regarding pandemic response based on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. It describes the goals of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), a program created to instill equitable access to COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. The treaty would also take into consideration leadership and expertise from other global health organizations. The […]

Comprehensive report on pandemic response solutions developed by 180 leading experts

MIT News  March 30, 2021 When WHO declared COVID -19 outbreak a pandemic the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, MIT Media Lab’s Community Biotechnology Initiative, and MilliporeSigma together convened more than 180 thought leaders from around the globe to collaborate asynchronously and rapidly identify solutions. The effort resulted in a comprehensive report that synthesizes data-driven insights from this expert group, known as the “Pandemic Response Supermind,” outlining the most promising solutions for pandemic response. They identified gaps and innovative solutions across five key technical areas of pandemic response, including: transmission control; diagnostics and monitoring; access to therapies and vaccines; sharing […]

Researchers propose process to detect and contain emerging diseases

Science Daily  December 18, 2020 To date, the main pre-emptive response to zoonotic diseases outbreaks has been extensive, cost-heavy efforts to document virus diversity in wildlife. To enable fast detection of new zoonotic disease outbreaks, an international team of researchers (USA – University of Arkansas, George Washington University, University of South Carolina, Kenya, Canada, France Gabon, Republic of Congo, Rwanda) proposes a system of procuring and screening samples from hospital patients with fevers of unknown origin, analyzing samples from suspicious fatalities of unknown cause, testing blood serum in high-risk or sentinel groups and analyzing samples that have already been collected […]

A step toward a universal flu vaccine

MIT News  October 7, 2020 Most flu vaccines consist of inactivated flu viruses coated with a protein called hemagglutinin (HA), which helps them bind to host cells. After vaccination, the immune system generates squadrons of antibodies which almost always bind to the head of the HA protein which mutates rapidly. Parts of the HA stem very rarely mutate. The immune system is intrinsically not good at seeing the conserved parts of these proteins, which if effectively targeted would elicit an antibody response that would neutralize multiple influenza types. A team of researchers in the US (MIT, Harvard University, industry) describe […]

Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak Suggests We Aren’t Ready for a Pandemic

Global Biodefense  February 7, 2020 According to a top biosecurity expert in the US over the past decade and a half, since the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s, it’s clear that China has built stronger public health capacity. What this outbreak is making clear is that there is no country, including the United States, that is fully prepared for a high consequence outbreak. This outbreak is obviously a bad situation and we don’t know which direction it is going to go yet. But we do know that we don’t have the capability to detect, isolate, and ultimately stop a […]

Joint Call to Action on Pandemic Preparedness and Response: 7 Recommendations for Readiness

Global Biodefense  January 20, 2020 The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, World Economic Forum and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have issued 7 recommendations in a joint call for action for new public-private cooperation to improve Pandemic Preparedness and Response. Recommendations have been reviewed, built upon and agreed to since first introduced at the Event 201 pandemic exercise conducted in October 2019 that featured a fictional coronavirus igniting a major pandemic and 15 global corporate and health stakeholders from key industries responding. The next severe pandemic will not only cause great illness and loss of life but could also […]