U.S. lab develops animal model for new coronavirus; needed to conduct studies

[Shiloh]

Source: http://www.mysask.com/portal/site/m...x.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken


U.S. lab develops animal model for new coronavirus; needed to conduct studies
Helen Branswell, The Canadian Press
Wed, 3 Apr 2013 15:47:00 CST


TORONTO - Scientists have announced they have developed an animal model for the new coronavirus, an important development in the study of the new disease agent.

The work was done by researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont.

The team, led by virologist Vincent Munster, found that the new coronavirus causes pneumonia in macaque monkeys.

Scientists have been working to develop an animal model since the virus was discovered last year.

Animal models are needed to study how a virus causes disease and to test potential tools to protect against it ? drugs that might mitigate the infection and perhaps eventually candidate vaccines.

Munster says the team tried a smaller animal, which would have been easier for laboratories to work with, but the virus did not infect hamsters.

Dutch scientists have also been trying to develop an animal model for the virus, but found it doesn't infect ferrets. That's a bit of a surprise. Ferrets are the primary animal model for influenza and for the SARS virus, which is related to the new coronavirus...

 

[Giuseppe]

Re: U.S. lab develops animal model for new coronavirus; needed to conduct studies

[Source: The New England Journal of Medicine, full text: (LINK). Extract.]

Correspondence

Pneumonia from Human Coronavirus in a Macaque Model

April 3, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc1215691


To the Editor:

During the past year, a newly identified human coronavirus (hCoV) associated with severe respiratory disease and occasionally acute renal failure has emerged in the Middle East. A total of 15 laboratory-confirmed human cases have been reported from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and England, with 9 deaths. The first human isolate of hCoV-EMC/2012 was classified as a betacoronavirus, which placed it in the same genus as the coronavirus that causes the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Studies revealed a broad tropism for replication in cell lines originating from different mammalian species, potentially indicating a low barrier for cross-species transmission. This situation reminds the infectious-disease community of the emergence of the SARS coronavirus and calls for immediate public health preparedness and response with rapid, reliable diagnostic tests and vigilant surveillance. The availability of an animal disease model is an important aspect of developing effective countermeasures.

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