UC Davis today was named a partner in a new $18.5 million national research center that will study influenza viruses with pandemic potential, such as avian influenza H5N1 (“bird flu”).
The Center for Rapid Influenza Surveillance and Research (CRISAR) isone of six new centers that were announced by the National Instituteof Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an arm of the National Institutesof Health.
The new center’s overall objective is to expand the federalgovernment’s early-detection program for influenza, and to help itreduce the chances of a deadly influenza outbreak around the world,as well as reduce the effects of common, “seasonal” strains ofinfluenza.
Walter Boyce, a research veterinarian and director of the UC DavisWildlife Health Center, will lead the UC Davis branch of CRISAR.Boyce and Scott Layne of UCLA, a public health physician andprofessor at UCLA’s School of Public Health, have been namedco-directors and co-principal investigators of the new center.
“UC Davis and UCLA have joined together to tackle one of the mostimportant public health threats of our time,” said Boyce.
The Wildlife Health Center is a program of the UC Davis School ofVeterinary Medicine. UC Davis is one of the world’s top veterinarymedical schools and a leader in the study of diseases transmittedfrom animals to people, called zoonoses.
“This new center is an acknowledgment that the health of people,domestic animals, and wildlife are inextricably entwined, and thatveterinary medicine and human medicine really are ‘one medicine,’ “said Bennie Osburn, dean of the UC Davis School of VeterinaryMedicine.
Public health experts say that learning exactly how the influenzavirus is changing as it moves around the globe is essential toknowing when it might develop the ability to move quickly betweenhumans, giving it pandemic potential, and knowing how to fight itwith preventive vaccines and antiviral drugs.
UC Davis’ chief role in the new surveillance and research center willbe to coordinate the collection and testing of tens of thousands ofsamples from wildlife, especially wild birds, on both the U.S. andAsian sides of the Pacific Ocean.
UC Davis will also collect samples, in collaboration with theUniversity of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF), and the Wildlife ConservationSociety.
UC Davis will sample wildlife in the Pacific Flyway from Californiato Alaska. UAF will sample in Alaska, Far East Russia and Japan. TheWildlife Conservation Society, based in New York City, will sample inCambodia, Laos and Mongolia.
All samples will be tested at UC Davis and UAF for the presence ofinfluenza viruses. Positive samples will then be sent to Layne’sgroup at UCLA for precise identification based on their geneticmakeup.
Layne will direct the High Speed High Volume Laboratory Network forInfectious Diseases, which is being created to quickly analyze andprocess high quantities of biological samples. It will have theunique capability to analyze influenza genes from thousands ofviruses each year, far more quickly and in far greater numbers thanany other program.
The final CRISAR collaborator, Los Alamos National Laboratory, willprovide technological support to UCLA’s high-speed laboratory andcreate dipstick test devices for identifying positive flu samples inthe field.
“Clearly it’s important to know if and when strains of flu like AsianH5N1 make it to the U.S. But we can’t stop there,” said Boyce. “Weneed to know how viruses are changing, and whether they are becomingmore or less of a threat.
“This new national influenza surveillance and research center givesus that ability. CRISAR and the other NIH centers will work togetherto reduce and manage the threat of influenza.”
The California-based center is one of six new federal influenzaresearch centers announced today. The others are based at:
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis (principalinvestigator Robert Webster);
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (principal investigatorMarguerite Pappaiaonou);
Emory University, Atlanta (principal investigator Richard Compans);
Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City (principalinvestigator Adolfo Garcia-Sastre); and
University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y. (principal investigatorJohn Treanor).