Nature Medicine touts Webster's latest discovery

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (ALSAC)
Monday, 26 August 2002

When cops nab a killer and expose his accomplice, the story makes headlines. For the past few years, St. Jude sleuths have been tracking a killer strain of influenza. Now they have identified its accomplice—a rogue gene that helps the virus slay its victims. The evidence is reported in the latest edition of Nature Medicine. The journal also includes two other articles addressing the St. Jude discovery.

A team of researchers led by Robert Webster, PhD, of Infectious Diseases has been hot on the trail of an influenza virus that killed thousands of chickens in Hong Kong in 1997. When it moved into humans, the virus killed a third of the people it infected. The outbreak was stymied by the wholesale slaughter of 1.2 million chickens.

Webster and his colleagues, Sang Heui Seo, DVM, PhD, and Erich Hoffmann, PhD, wanted to know why this virus was so lethal. They discovered that the virus' aggressive tendencies were linked to a specific gene, known as the NS gene. This gene encodes a protein that helps the influenza virus avoid infection-fighting proteins like interferon produced by the body.

The discovery will help researchers who study influenza viruses and those who develop drugs to fight the flu. Viruses similar to the 1997 strain are still active in Hong Kong's bird population, said Peter Palese, PhD, co-author of an editorial that accompanies Webster's article in Nature Medicine. Palese emphasizes the importance of studying influenza: a pandemic in 1918 killed at least 20 million people worldwide. "The threat that another pandemic strain may emerge makes understanding the pathogenesis of highly virulent viruses such as the 1918 virus or the 1997 Hong Kong viruses all the more urgent," he writes.

Webster is a vocal advocate of preparing for another such pandemic. "A new pandemic is inevitable, and the world is unprepared," Webster said.

At St. Jude, Webster directs the World Health Organization's Collaborating Laboratory on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Lower Animals and Birds. It is the world's only lab designed to study influenza at the animal-human interface.

For more information, or to contact St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (ALSAC), see their website at: www.stjude.org