Flu fighters

1 September 2008

Wellcome Trust-funded researchers are to examine what is preventing the H5N1 avian influenza virus from causing a human pandemic, and what mutations are required to realise its deadly potential. The research could hold the key to early identification of a potential influenza pandemic, and to developing drugs and a vaccine.

Professor Ten Feizi at Imperial College London believes one reason that H5N1 has not yet evolved into an effective pathogen capable of widespread transmission between humans lies in how the virus attaches itself to the respiratory tract. She is leading an international research project, which has received over £720 000 from the Trust, to identify the receptor molecules in the human respiratory tract to which viruses attach. The researchers will also look at how changes in the binding protein on the surface of the virus might increase its ability to attach to the tract and cause infection.

For this project, Professor Feizi will work with Professors Menno de Jong and Jeremy Farrar from the Wellcome Trust South-east Asia Programme in Vietnam, Dr Alan Hay and Dr Steve Gamblin at the Medical Research Council National Institute for Medical Research, London, and Dr Mikhail Matrosovich at the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany.