bird flu

New vaccine blocks bird flu

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(This article was #12 in Discover Magazine’s top 100 stories of 2007.)

Although avian flu made few headlines in 2007, the virus continued to claim lives in Asia, particularly in Indonesia. The good news is that this year the FDA approved the first bird flu vaccine and announced plans to stockpile it for emergency use during a crisis.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997 and since then has infected more than 330 people, killing more than 200. In 2007, the virus—which normally infects birds and occasionally jumps from birds to humans—affected seven countries, prompting experts to warn that it could gain the ability to jump from person to person and trigger a pandemic.

In April, the FDA approved a two-shot vaccine made by Sanofi Pasteur. In a clinical trial, this vaccine protected 45 percent of the adults who received the highest dose against infection from H5N1. The government said its goal was to stockpile enough doses of the Sanofi vaccine to protect 20 million people as a stopgap measure until a more potent vaccine is available.

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SARS: Open season

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(I stumbled across this story when I was in Beijing in October 2005, interviewing scientists for a special package on Chinese research. I had lunch with Hongkui Deng, a rising star, who took me completely by surprise when he told me his lab had shifted focus from stem cells to SARS. When I looked into it and discovered he wasn’t alone, I knew I was on to a nice story about Chinese science, a rarity in those days. You can download a pdf of the article.)

SARS caught China unawares. But the ensuing struggle to characterize and contain the virus has put the country’s work on infectious diseases back on target.

Like anyone who was in Beijing in the spring of 2003, Hongkui Deng remembers it vividly. The Chinese government could no longer deny that the country was in the grip of a new and potentially fatal disease: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). By July, the epidemic would have spread, affecting more than 8,000 people worldwide and claiming 813 lives; but in April, the panic was already palpable.

Normally bustling, the streets of Beijing were virtually deserted. The few people who ventured out wore masks and gloves, and avoided even eye contact with others. Cinemas, schools and shops were closed. It was, as many describe it, frightening and eerie — even apocalyptic. “Everyone was scared,” Deng recalls.

Deng, a cell biologist, had returned home in 2001 after more than a decade in the United States. Now based at Peking University, he was pursuing his research on embryonic stem cells. Returning from a conference in April 2003, he learnt that the mother of one of his students had SARS. Once officials had sprayed the lab, Deng’s students began asking if they could work on the disease that was paralysing the nation.

“Everybody wanted to do something,” he says. Deng had limited experience in virology, apart from a short stint working on HIV, and his students had even less. But like many other scientists in China, the team saw research on SARS as both an opportunity and a duty, and set about mastering the basics — fast.

Feverish activity

For at least six months, Deng’s lab stopped working on stem cells and focused entirely on SARS. It wasn’t alone. Across the country, scientists trained in protein science, anatomy, immunology and biochemistry — almost anybody who could contribute in any way — were shelving their normal projects. “Everyone was working on SARS,” says Deng. “You just had to.”

That commitment has paid off. Although China still faces a great many hurdles, its government and scientific community are becoming better prepared to combat epidemics, say some US scientists. Long after global interest in SARS has waned, Chinese scientists are still publishing important work on the disease.

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Bird flu: the ongoing story

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(I wrote this blog post for Nature’s bird flu coverage from Shanghai, China, after a sobering trip to a local market. Thanks to my guide, stem cell researcher Hui Zhen Sheng, I was able to see things tourists are not normally privy to. You can read the post in its context here.)

To test whether a chicken is healthy, the vendors hold it upside down and check its rear for pinkness. Credit: Marc Lipsitch

It all begins in Asia. That’s the recurring theme in the countless stories that, probably like you, I’ve been reading the past few months. But none of it really hit home till last week when I was in China, where I got to see people and poultry mingling uncomfortably close.

At one street market in Shanghai, a few blocks west of the city’s famed Yuyuan Gardens, vendors piled plucked chickens next to stalls of vegetables, fruit and fried insects. The sheer volume of unidentifiable creatures and creature-parts was bizarre enough. But truly frightening was how the vendors handled the birds.

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