The UK will be better equipped to respond to the threat of an influenza pandemic, with new Trust funding for a project using state-of-the-art techniques to help monitor and track steps in the emergence of new influenza viruses.

Announced today, the £700 000 funding will bring together experts in the fields of human and animal influenza from the Medical Research Council's National Institute for Medical Research, the University of Cambridge, the Health Protection Agency and the Veterinary Laboratory Agency with scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute working on modern sequencing technologies. Together, the team will establish an influenza virus sequencing 'pipeline' to sequence large numbers of viral genomes. Sequencing the genomes of the influenza viruses will allow the researchers to track the development of viruses that may be evolving towards pandemic potential.

Many of the emerging infections in human or animal populations are RNA viruses, such as the H5N1 or SARS viruses, which are more flexible and adaptable than DNA viruses and are able to jump the species barriers from animal to human more easily. RNA viruses have relatively small genomes that are frequently highly diverse, meaning that the techniques for genetic analysis previously developed need to be adapted. Once the technology has been set up for influenza viruses it could be rapidly applied to other emerging RNA viruses.

In keeping with new Trust policy, the data from the study will be made freely available to all to enable policy makers and healthcare officials, as well as other scientists, to make the necessary preparations to limit the impact of a pandemic.

Image credit: R. Dourmashkin, Influenza viruses (blue) attaching to the cells of the upper respiratory tract

See also

• Press release (full details)
• Funding: Fast tracking influenza research proposals (News, 23 January 2006)