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Mount Sinai Researchers Study Most Lethal Flu Virus
Adolfo García-Sastre, PhD, Assistant Professor in the
Department of Microbiology, along with researchers from three other
laboratories, has successfully recovered an influenza virus containing one
of the genes from the virus responsible for the devastating influenza of
1918, known as the Spanish Flu.
[Email:
[email protected]
Phone: 212-241-7769 Fax: 212-534-1684]
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This illustration depicts the Spanish Flu virus
of 1918. |
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Adolfo García-Sastre, PhD |
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Christopher Basler, PhD |
The researchers used tissue from an Inuit woman who succumbed to the
flu and whose body was buried and preserved under the permafrost in
Alaska. Amplification of small pieces of RNA from the 1918 virus that were
left in the frozen lung tissues allowed the reconstruction of several of
the genes of the Spanish Flu virus. Working in a high containment facility
at the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia, Dr.
García-Sastre and Christopher Basler, PhD, Research Assistant Professor in
the Department of Microbiology, used a newly developed technique to
recover a live influenza virus containing one of the genes that may have
been responsible for the deadliness of the 1918 virus.
"It is important to understand why the influenza of 1918 was so
virulent," said Dr. García-Sastre. "It was the most devastating disease in
human history. It killed more than 20 million people worldwide in one
year," he explained.
"Since 1919, we have not witnessed a similarly devastating influenza
virus strain," said Dr. Palese, Professor and Chairman of the Microbiology
Department. "Nevertheless, it is likely that emergence of a similar
influenza virus strain may occur in the future."
The hope is to learn from the reconstructed genetic information of the
1918 virus. "If we understand the molecular mechanism that makes the
Spanish Flu highly virulent, then we can try to inhibit the virulence if a
second pandemic should occur," said Dr. García-Sastre. He added, "Because
of the highly infectious nature of influenza viruses and the ability of
large numbers of people to travel rapidly throughout the world, a new
pandemic of Spanish-Flu-like influenza would have tremendous consequences
for human health." This new research may prevent such grave
consequences.
The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences.
SARS and Biological Warfare
"Small is the number of them who see
with their own eyes and feel with their own
hearts."
Albert Einstein
Week of Sept. 28, 2002; Vol. 162, No. 13
New Drugs Beat Old Flu: Antiviral agents counter deadly 1918
influenza
John Travis (http://www.sciencenews.org/20020928/fob3.asp)
When I find volital articles like this, I repost them and usually send
the content to others because the seem to disappear quite quickly. I
can no longer access this page:
http://adsr13.mssm.edu/domains/dept/ facultyInfo.epl?objname=microbiology&user=baslec01
[NOTE: We have a code called SOS among nerds.
It's call Sound of Silence. This is an indication that something very
wrong is happening and a scientist or engineer is being GAGGED. It's
one of those things the MBAs and Administrators don't understand. But we
take it very seriously. SO?
I've seen faculty disappear from a college, but not the documents they publis in a department unless something terrible wrong is going on. Now
these guys won awards. You don't remove your most prestegist people unless
there is a problem.
I think there is a link between this and SARS because the information came via
an Angel--the search I did was for Bloodworm not SARS and I got the
reference to Christopher Basler below.
VIRUSES
Taming of the flu
Scientists who want to reconstruct the flu virus that killed 50
million people in 1918 to learn why it was so deadly got a dose of
reassurance last week. A study in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences suggests that today's antiflu drugs could
treat accidental infections.
Christopher Basler of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York
and his colleagues took a mouse flu virus and engineered it to have
three 1918 flu genes. They then infected mice and tissue cultures with
the modified viruses and tested several drugs against them. The drugs'
success means that scientists working with a resurrected virus could
take them as a safety precaution. It might also reassure critics of
such work, who fear that bioterrorists could unleash the virus. -
N.B.
Science &
Technology 10/21/02
I did a virus scan on my computer using
Norton. The program locked up when I clicked on the first one making the
Window go blank. Since it took all night to perform the virus
scan, I was pretty upset. I couldn't find out where the worm
was and only could remember blood. So I tired some combinations
eventually trying bloodworm and virus. It took less than a few minutes to
get this. And Goggle gave me this as the
first credible link--US News--on bloodworm virus. :-) This is how
the Angels work. I feel like a dog in fetching a ball. Like
this dog I do math naturally--looking
for the path of least resistance. My microwave has
been arching too. When this happens I know they want my attention.
They were really upset about the
pornography in the mid 90s. One that blew up is in my storage unit. I hate
when that happens. I've never had a hallucination or heard voices, but
know math and this is way beyond any coincidence. I still haven't found
where the blood worm is on my computer yet but it's not on C: so that only
leaves 7 other drives to check. God Help Me! So I say a prayer and
think... I did find a file scanning my Programs files. It was in Norton
SystemWorks--Incoming directory. They called the file
AP0.VBS and it's listed as
Bloodhound.VBS.Worm, the name that Symantec give undocumented virus.
So far I've had only 5 since I got Symantec and they were found by McAfee.
One was a documented virus. One! So they downloaded them and deleted them
from my machine. So I must be getting hacked by Microsoft via one of their
undocumented backdoors which is allowing them to get past the virus
detection.
We
call these ROGUE programs. Most of the virus and worms are coming
out of the very corporations that make the products you are suppose to
trust. I wrote to Gates about his engineers bragging about this.
SO? Is this biological warfare or a
microbiological experiment gone out of control? In either case, we
definitely need to stop medaling with genetics research until we know.
Try and find anything on this guy? What
is disturbing here is the idea of Biological War. This started in China.
They started connecting it to chickens. We had a major computer worm
called Code Red. Now bang! It's been my experience that people always
project their own mode of behavior onto others. With all the
paranoia in D.C. and the Pentagon about biological war, we must be doing
research on this ourselves. We have a lot of wild guns in our society and
our governments. It's impossible to control these biological agent when
they are turned loose. And it's also predictable that someone will use
something this deadly if it's out there. These projects always go
out of control.]
A greater killer than the First World War, the influenza virus that
swept the globe from 1918 to 1919 took the lives of 20 million to 40
million people. After partially recreating that deadly virus, a research
team has now shown that available flu drugs could probably prevent a new
pandemic of the 1918 influenza strain or a similar flu.
In recent years, scientists studying tissue preserved since 1918 have
pieced together several genes from this deadly influenza strain, also
commonly known as the Spanish flu (SN: 3/22/97, p. 172:
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/3_22_97/fob1.htm ;My name taken at
Confirmation in the Catholic Church is Jude.
I sign my name Jude from time to time when I am doing that kind of work.). Virologists are
investigating why that virus was so lethal compared with typical influenza
strains, but its genes and the proteins they encode haven't offered any
obvious answer.
OLD-STYLE MEDICINE. Emergency hospitals, such as this one in Kansas, dealt
with the 1918 flu epidemic that killed more than 20 million people.
National Museum of Health and Medicine, AFIP
Christopher F. Basler of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York
and his colleagues have now incorporated several genes from the 1918 flu
into an influenza strain that has adapted to mice and typically kills the
rodents. The introduced viral genes encode a surface protein called
hemagglutinin (HA), an enzyme known as neuraminidase (NA), and two
proteins dubbed M1 and M2.
The researchers expected that those genes would reduce the virulence of
the mouse-adapted virus. Flu viruses isolated from people rarely prove
lethal to rodents, and genes from human-adapted strains typically weaken
rodent-influenza viruses.
Not so for the HA and NA genes of the 1918 flu. The engineered virus
containing both of these genes readily killed mice, the scientists report
in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. The HA and NA genes, when each was present alone, lowered
virulence. This suggests that the specific combination of HA and NA may
underlie the 1918 flu disaster. "In any influenza [strain], the HA and NA
have to be compatible for the virus to grow well," says Basler.
The researchers also tested whether the two recently approved classes of
flu drugs combat pseudo-1918 viruses. Starting treatment with NA
inhibitors before introducing the HA-NA engineered virus prevented 90
percent of the mice from dying, they found. And all mice infected with a
flu strain carrying the 1918 gene for M2 survived when treated with M2
inhibitors, even if treatment began 6 hours after infection.
"The drugs appear to be effective against viruses with the 1918 genes,"
says Basler.
In people, these antiviral drugs are more effective at preventing
infections than at treating people already afflicted, notes Basler.
Consequently, he says, public health officials would probably advocate
precautionary use of the drugs if they foresaw a major influenza outbreak.
Basler notes that the mouse work was done in a facility especially
designed for studying dangerous influenza strains. Virologists at the same
facility study a 1997 flu strain that originated in
Hong Kong chickens and
sparked fears of a new worldwide epidemic (SN: 12/13/97, p. 372:
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/12_13_97/fob1.htm).
[in 1991 when I was writing to Gates about my
research in Chickens it was because I had learned what causes cancer
and deceases like AIDS. But more importantly, I knew how to cure it.
And the methods being used today are more danger than a cure. I can use
computer technology to do this and there is no threat to more infections
or mutation of the cancer or virtual disease. For my research and attempts
to find funding, I came under attack but the University of Washington and
other so called research institutes. You can't cure a cancer. You have to
placate it. Humans instinctually know this. So some AIDS people survive
due to instincts. It is true of cancer also. People lacking these
instincts can learn to placate their illnesses. The reason I support
Martha Stewart is because she instinctually know what I'm about and is
doing a GOOD THING with her business.
Some survive and others die because they don't know what a GOOD THING a
nurturing women or protective male
is any more. This may be the only reason that Gays get AIDS more and that
it's so rampant in Africa. It's all mixed up. The duelality of Yin-Yang is
very important. Children are Important. Families are important. In
essence, It's NOT A GOOD THING to go against
Mother Nature.]
"Clearly, once you start putting multiple 1918 genes into a virus,
concerns about safety increase," says Basler. "There's no guarantee a
1918-like virus couldn't return, so it's important to understand what was
going on back then."
Robert Krug of the University of Texas at Austin and other virologists
have called for the global stockpiling of NA and M2 inhibitors to ward off
a natural influenza pandemic or one started by terrorists. Still, he's
fearful the new study could offer a false sense of security, especially
since viruses quickly develop resistance to drugs. "Hong Kong–like viruses
are a bigger threat than the 1918 virus, and we need additional
antivirals," he says.
****************
If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered for
publication in Science News, please send it to
[email protected].
References:
Tumpey, T.M., et al. In press. Existing antivirals are effective against
influenza viruses with genes from the 1918 pandemic virus. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.
Further Readings:
Bower, B. 1997. Chicken flu virus raises concerns. Science News 152(Dec.
13):372. Available at
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/12_13_97/fob1.htm
Sternberg, S. 1997. A doughboy's lungs yield 1918 flu virus. Science
Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Microbiology
Email:
[email protected]
Phone: 212-241-7769
Fax: 212-534-1684
Mailing Address
One Gustave L. Levy Place
Box 1124
New York, NY 10029
Training and Education
PhD University of Salamanca, Spain
Current Research Virology
Our laboratory has developed several techniques which allow the
genetic manipulation of negative strand RNA virus genomes. We are
currently using this methodology in two major research areas.
1. Generation of negative strand RNA virus vectors: RNA viruses are
effective inducers of humoral and cellular immune responses.
Therefore, attenuated RNA viruses may be used to express protective
antigens of other pathogens for which no safe attenuated strains are
available. We are involved in the construction of recombinant
influenza and Newcastle disease viruses expressing a variety of B-cell
and T-cell epitopes from different pathogens. These recombinant
viruses are being used to elicit immune responses against their
expressed antigens. Specifically, we are interested in the generation
of influenza virus vectors expressing selected antigens from HIV-1,
malaria parasites, and tumor cells as a means to induce protective or
therapeutic immune responses against these pathogenic agents.
2. Studies on the replication cycle of RNA viruses: The functions
of cis- and trans-acting elements in the replication cycle of
influenza virus and the interactions of such viral components among
themselves and with host components are being investigated. For this
purpose, we are introducing specific mutations into the genome of the
virus, and the phenotypic characteristics of the generated virus
mutants are being analyzed. These studies are also focused on the
generation of attenuated influenza viruses with potential use as live
vaccines against influenza. In addition, we are investigating the
ability of different RNA viruses, including influenza,
respiratory syncytial, dengue and
SARS viruses, to inhibit the induction of innate
antiviral immune responses in their hosts.
1:1 Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to
them
that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ,
and called:
1:2 Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.
1:3 Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common
salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that
ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto
the saints.
1:4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of
old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of
our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our
Lord Jesus Christ.
1:5 I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this,
how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt,
afterward destroyed them that believed not.
1:6 And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own
habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness
unto the judgment of the great day.
1:7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like
manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after
strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of
eternal fire.
1:8 Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise
dominion, and speak evil of dignities.
1:9 Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he
disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing
accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.
1:10 But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but
what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they
corrupt themselves.
1:11 Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran
greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the
gainsaying of Core.
1:12 These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with
you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water,
carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit,
twice dead, plucked up by the roots;
1:13 Raging waves of the sea,
foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the
blackness of darkness for ever.
1:14 And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these,
saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
1:15 To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly
among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly
committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have
spoken against him.
1:16 These are murmurers, complainers,
walking after their own lusts;
and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in
admiration because of advantage.
1:17 But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of
the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ;
1:18 How that they told you
there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their
own ungodly lusts.
1:19 These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having
not the
Spirit.
1:20 But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith,
praying in the Holy Ghost,
1:21 Keep yourselves in the love of God,
looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
1:22 And of some have compassion, making a difference:
1:23 And others
save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment
spotted by the flesh.
1:24 Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to
present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding
joy,
1:25 To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion
and power, both now and ever.
Amen.
REDMOND ROSE
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