A National Institutes of Health agency is funding research into the life cycles of two virus types that could be used as biological weapons with the hope of creating better treatments to use against them, Purdue University announced yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 5).
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has awarded the Indiana institution with a two-year, $4 million grant from the 2009 federal stimulus bill for the research led by Purdue University.
Researchers are expected to study two groups of viruses --flaviviruses, such as dengue and West Nile, and alphaviruses, such as eastern equine encephalitis and chikungunya.
Dengue alone causes roughly 24,000 deaths each year, largely in tropical zones, according to Biological Sciences Department head Richard Kuhn.
"Viruses within these two groups pose significant risks to large segments of the population, and methods of controlling infection and disease are few," he said in a press release.
"Although these viruses are now mostly restricted to the tropics, as population density increases in cities and there is a greater global movement of people, there is the fear that these viruses are going to gain a greater geographical range," Kuhn added. "There also is the possibility of terrorists using weapons made from these viruses, so a better understanding of their life cycles could lead to ways to defend against attacks."
By looking at the viruses' structural details, including the means by which antibodies adhere to those viruses, Kuhn said researchers should be able to deduce how "the antibodies work and which sites they specifically bind to on the outside of the viruses, and those findings may lead to better vaccines and antiviral drugs" (Purdue University release, Nov. 17).