W.H.O. Panel Backs Gene Manipulation in Smallpox Virus

NY Times ^ | November 11, 2004 | LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

[neverdem]

An advisory committee to the World Health Organization has recommended that Russian and American scientists be allowed to manipulate a gene in the smallpox virus for the first time to speed up discovery of drugs effective against the virus, the agency said today.

The proposed laboratory experiments would involve inserting a marker gene into the smallpox virus that glows green under fluorescent light. The technique is a standard test to screen for potential antiviral drugs, but the manipulation would not change the virulence of the virus, said officials of W.H.O., a United Nations agency in Geneva.

But approval must first be obtained from the agency's director general, Dr. Jong-wook Lee; from an executive board that meets in January; and from a meeting of the agency's member countries, scheduled for May 2005. In addition, the matter could be referred to other committees at any step along the way, officials said.

Smallpox was a scourge until the health agency eradicated it in 1980. Since then, stocks of the variola virus that causes the disease have been kept frozen in W.H.O.-approved laboratories in Russia and the United States.

Although a vaccine can prevent smallpox, no drugs are known that can prevent it.

When eradication was achieved, W.H.O. had intended to destroy the remaining stocks of smallpox virus. But the agency's member states delayed such destruction, calling for additional research to find effective drugs, develop safer vaccines and improve diagnostic tests. Such research must be conducted in laboratories with the highest biosecurity with scientists wearing elaborate protective gear resembling space suits.

At the advisory committee's annual meeting last week, its 20 members voted unanimously to allow insertion of the gene, known as G.F.P. for green fluorescent marker protein, into variola virus at the two laboratories in Russia and the United States, said Dr. Daniel Lavanchy, a smallpox expert for the health organization. The American one is at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The committee's decision was first reported today by National Public Radio. But a World Health Organization spokesman said the report erred in saying that the agency had approved the experiment and that the agency would allow scientists to take single genes from the smallpox virus and insert them in other viruses.

NPR also reported that last year a W.H.O. advisory committee wrote that it had "significant reservations" about this kind of research because of fears that it might accidentally create an even more potent version of smallpox that could be used as a new weapon in bioterrorism.

But Dr. Lavanchy said the experiments that the advisory committee rejected last year were of a different kind than those recommended last week and that insertion of the marker gene in the proposed experiments would not alter the ability of variola virus to cause disease.

In the proposed screening test, the virus with the inserted fluorescent marker glows green only if the virus is not susceptible to a candidate drug; the glow disappears if a candidate drug destroys the altered virus.

So far, only one drug - Cidofovir - has been identified as a candidate for treating smallpox. The aim of the proposed experiments is to seek a number of additional candidate drugs, and that may take a number of years, Dr. Lavanchy said.

[ElkGroveDan]

Although a vaccine can prevent smallpox, no drugs are known that can prevent it.

I'm glad they cleared that up.

[neverdem]

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.

[xJones]

That's freaky. I'll age-date myself and confess to having been vaccinated against small-pox at age 6, and having the little bump come up on my arm afterwards. I later worked with an elderly man who had had smallpox in his childhood, and his face was still badly pock-marked.

That disease isn't gone, because disease warfare labs still have samples of it.

[foolscap]

If this goes through and it works it will be helpful for the creation of other vaccines. Right now it is possible to make the flu vaccine using DNA manipulation however drug companies have shied away out of fear of lawsuits. If they could do this it would make it much faster and cheaper to create flu vaccine every year. I hope this is a small step in that direction. It's about time we give up the old labor intensive methods we have been using.

[grey_whiskers]

Although a vaccine can prevent smallpox, no drugs are known that can prevent it.

Sounds like John Kerry...we had drugs to prevent it before we didn't...