Scientists at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg plan to follow the lead of U.S. researchers and resurrect the virus that caused the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, a development that has led to calls for international oversight and control of the dreaded microbe.
The Canadian researchers plan to bring the virus to life using pieces of DNA that contain the genetic recipe for the virus.
The virus will be recreated inside living cells, then harvested and used to infect animals in an attempt to identify what made it so virulent, said Frank Plummer, scientific director of the lab.
Depending on how quickly the scientists work, Plummer said, they could have a live 1918 flu virus within six months.
The micro-organism killed as many as 50 million people when it swept around the world in 1918-19.
There are fears an accidental release of the recreated microbe could be catastrophic.
Jens Kuhn, a virologist and bioweapons expert at Harvard Medical School, says the Canadian project - which has been approved by the Public Health Agency of Canada - should not have been allowed to proceed without international approval and oversight.
Kuhn insisted the virus should never have been recreated: "We have enough bugs to deal with on this planet already."
He is concerned the revitalization and use of the virus has the potential to rekindle the bioweapons race and prompt other countries to say: "Well, if you can do it, we have a right to do it, too."
A report and accompanying editorial in the journal Nature today echo his concerns and suggest the World Health Organization should consider restricting the virus's use.
The Canadian project is the first of what could be several projects to flow out of the resurrection of the 1918 flu virus announced last month by U.S. scientists.
The Americans sequenced the virus's DNA and recreated the microbe, which now lives in vials stored in a high-security lab at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
U.S. authorities have no immediate plans to ship the 1918 virus to other labs. The agency has not yet received any formal request for it, and is to review proposed projects on a case-by-case basis, CDC spokesperson Van Roebuck said. Any virus sent to other labs will be tracked while in transit and shipped in crash-proof packages.
Even with such precautions, "the threat of an accidental release is real," the Nature editorial said.
The Winnipeg team, working with a group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, plans to build the virus from scratch, using information now available in the scientific literature.
It is "easier and quicker" to re-create the virus than to request and arrange for transport of the CDC virus, said Kelly Keith, spokesperson for the Winnipeg lab. She also said the researchers might want to study individual genes in the virus, work better done from the ground up rather than dismantling an existing live virus.
The pieces of the viral gene that will travel from Wisconsin to Winnipeg pose no risk of infection, Plummer added. They need to be assembled inside living cells to create the virus.
Plummer said studying the virus might shed light on what made it so lethal. Because the 1918 flu moved from birds to humans, the work might also provide insight into the threat posed by avian flu strains carried by birds in Asia and Europe, which health officials worry might start another pandemic. The research might also lead to new vaccines.
He could not say if the Canadian work would duplicate or complement research on the 1918 virus planned or under way at the CDC.
Roebuck was unaware of the Canadian project and declined to comment on the work.
No one can say for certain what would happen if the virus got loose, but the microbe has a history of spreading rapidly among people and around the world. The chances of an accidental release are small, Kuhn said, "but the consequences could be catastrophic."
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