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Leading influenza virus researchers
at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine are developing
a new option for preventing and treating respiratory infection and disease
caused by highly pathogenic strains of avian influenza virus.
Avian influenza or flu is likely to cause the next worldwide outbreak of disease,
according to health officials from the United Nations, the World Health Organization
and the Centers for Disease Control.
Historically, worldwide flu epidemics can be expected to occur three to four
times each century. But recently, the emergence of a highly pathogenic avian
flu in Asia known as H5N1 is thought to have significantly heightened the risk
of another flu pandemic. This strain has infected and devastated the poultry
industry in nine countries in Asia.
A flu pandemic is a global epidemic that occurs when a new flu virus appears
in the human population, causing serious illness and spreading easily from
person to person worldwide. Health experts generally agree that an influenza
pandemic is on the horizon and could occur in the near future.
Ralph Tripp, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases at the veterinary college,
is collaborating with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals to develop a new therapeutic
approach to prevent and treat this devastating virus that could emerge and
result in widespread loss of human lives. It is believed that current flu vaccines
will not provide protection for such new strains of flu, and producing an effective
H5N1 vaccine in time to control a worldwide epidemic will be difficult if not
impossible.
But a new approach called RNA interference or RNAi used by Tripp and colleagues
at Alnylam can be used to target and silence key flu genes required for virus
replication. Recent studies from the Tripp laboratory have shown that RNAi
has potent anti-viral activity against human and avian strains of the flu.
The discovery of RNAi has been heralded by many as a major breakthrough. The
journal Science named RNAi the top scientific achievement of 2002, as well
as one of the top 10 scientific advances of 2003.
RNAi is a mechanism that occurs naturally in cells, selectively silencing and
regulating specific genes. Since many diseases are caused by inappropriate
activity of certain genes, the ability to silence or regulate them could provide
a means for treating a wide range of diseases.
Pandemic flu differs from seasonal outbreaks that are caused by strains of
flu that are already in existence among people and may be prevented by annual
vaccines. A pandemic outbreak can be caused by new influenza strains or those
that have not circulated among people recently.
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Avian
influenza or flu is likely to cause the next worldwide outbreak of disease
among humans, according to health officials from the United Nations, the World
Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control.
