̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - pandemic

Cambridge initiative to address risks of future engineered pandemics

cjb250 — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 08:00:39 +0000

These are some of the questions being addressed by a new initiative launched today at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, which seeks to address the urgent challenge of managing the risks of future engineered pandemics.

̽��ֱ��Engineered Pandemics Risk Management Programme aims to understand the social and biological factors that might drive an engineered pandemic and to make a major contribution to building the UK’s capability for managing these risks. It will build a network of experts from academia, government, and industry to tackle the problem.

Increased security threats from state and non-state actors, combined with increased urbanisation and global mobility, means the threat of deliberate pathogen release must be taken seriously as must other intertwined aspects of pandemic risk such as mis- and disinformation, the erosion of trust in a number of institutions and an increasingly volatile geopolitical context. Further potential risks are posed by recent developments in gene-editing tools and artificial intelligence, which have rapidly advanced technological capability that may make it easier to engineer potential pandemic pathogens.

Professor Clare Bryant from the Department of Medicine at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge said: “There is a great opportunity to take a joined-up approach to managing the risks posed by engineered pandemics. We need experts and agencies across the spectrum to work together to develop a better understanding of who or what might drive such events and what their likely impact would be. And we need evidence-informed policies and networks in place that would help us respond to – or better still, prevent – such an eventuality.”

̽��ֱ��aims of the Engineered Pandemics Risk Management Programme are:
To develop the conceptual underpinnings for the risk management of engineered pandemics based on interdisciplinary research
To support the capability of the UK’s engineered pandemic risk policy and practice, including building and maintaining networks that connect government, academia and industry.
To strengthen the international networks that will support this work globally

There are four main strands of work:

Social determinants of engineered pandemic threat

This strand will look at the actors who have the potential to engineer harmful pathogens, either deliberately or accidentally. It will ask questions such as: What could motivate bioterrorism in the coming decades? Who might the relevant actors be? What are the kinds of engineered pandemic that someone might want to create?

Dr Rob Doubleday, Executive Director of the Centre for Science and Policy at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “ ̽��ֱ��common narrative is that there’s a wide range of potential actors out there who want to create bioweapons but don’t yet have the technical means. But in fact, there’s been very little work to really understand who these people might be, and their relationship to emerging technology. To explore these questions, we need a broad network including social scientists, biosecurity researchers, criminologists, experts in geopolitics and counterterrorism.”

̽��ֱ��strand will also look at the governance of scientific research in areas that may facilitate an engineered pandemic, whether unwittingly or maliciously, aiming to deliver a policy framework that enables freedom of intellectual research while managing real and apparent risk in infectious disease research.

Professor Bryant said: “As scientists, we’re largely responsible for policing our own work and ensuring integrity, trustworthiness and transparency, and for considering the consequences of new knowledge and how it might be used. But with the rapid progress of genomic technologies and AI, self-regulation becomes more difficult to manage. We need to find governance frameworks that balance essential scientific progress with its potential misapplication.”

Biological determinants of engineered pandemic threat

Recognising that the most likely cause of an engineered pandemic would be the deliberate release of a naturally-occurring pathogen – viral or bacterial, for example – rather than a man-made pathogen, this strand aims to understand what might make a particular pathogen infectious and how our immune systems respond to infection. This knowledge will allow researchers to screen currently available drugs to prevent or treat infection and to design vaccines quickly should a pandemic occur.

Modelling threats and risk management of engineered pandemics

̽��ֱ��Covid-19 pandemic highlighted practical problems of dealing with pandemic infections, from the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) to ensuring a sufficient supply of vaccine doses and availability of key medications. Modelling the potential requirements of a pandemic, how they could be delivered, how ventilation systems could be modiﬁed, what biosafety measures could be taken, for example, are all key challenges for managing any form of pandemic. This strand will address how existing modelling approaches would need to be adapted for a range of plausible engineered pandemics.

Policy innovation challenges

Working with the policy community, the Cambridge team will co-create research that directly addresses policy needs and involves policy makers. It will support policy makers in experimenting with more joined-up approaches through testing, learning and adapting solutions developed in partnership.

̽��ֱ��Engineered Pandemics Risk Management Programme is supported by a £5.25 million donation to the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH) at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��team intends it to form a central component of a future Pandemic Risk Management Centre, for which it is now fundraising.

Professor Joanna Page, Director of CRASSH, said: “Cambridge has strengths across a broad range of disciplines – from genetics and immunology to mathematical modelling to existential risk and policy engagement – that can make a much-needed initiative such as this a success.”

To find out more, visit the Engineered Pandemic Risk Management website.

Covid-19 showed us how vulnerable the world is to pandemics – but what if the next pandemic were somehow engineered? How would the world respond – and could we stop it happening in the first place?

There is a great opportunity to take a joined-up approach to managing the risks posed by engineered pandemics

Clare Bryant

Martin Sanchez

Illustration showing global pandemic spread

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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New vaccine effective against coronaviruses that haven’t even emerged yet

jg533 — Mon, 06 May 2024 09:00:25 +0000

This is a new approach to vaccine development called ‘proactive vaccinology’, where scientists build a vaccine before the disease-causing pathogen even emerges.

̽��ֱ��new vaccine works by training the body’s immune system to recognise specific regions of eight different coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2, and several that are currently circulating in bats and have potential to jump to humans and cause a pandemic.

Key to its effectiveness is that the specific virus regions the vaccine targets also appear in many related coronaviruses. By training the immune system to attack these regions, it gives protection against other coronaviruses not represented in the vaccine – including ones that haven’t even been identified yet.

For example, the new vaccine does not include the SARS-CoV-1 coronavirus, which caused the 2003 SARS outbreak, yet it still induces an immune response to that virus.

“Our focus is to create a vaccine that will protect us against the next coronavirus pandemic, and have it ready before the pandemic has even started,” said Rory Hills, a graduate researcher in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Pharmacology and first author of the report.

He added: “We’ve created a vaccine that provides protection against a broad range of different coronaviruses – including ones we don’t even know about yet.”

̽��ֱ��results are published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

“We don’t have to wait for new coronaviruses to emerge. We know enough about coronaviruses, and different immune responses to them, that we can get going with building protective vaccines against unknown coronaviruses now,” said Professor Mark Howarth in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Pharmacology, senior author of the report.

He added: “Scientists did a great job in quickly producing an extremely effective COVID vaccine during the last pandemic, but the world still had a massive crisis with a huge number of deaths. We need to work out how we can do even better than that in the future, and a powerful component of that is starting to build the vaccines in advance.”

̽��ֱ��new ‘Quartet Nanocage’ vaccine is based on a structure called a nanoparticle – a ball of proteins held together by incredibly strong interactions. Chains of different viral antigens are attached to this nanoparticle using a novel ‘protein superglue’. Multiple antigens are included in these chains, which trains the immune system to target specific regions shared across a broad range of coronaviruses.

This study demonstrated that the new vaccine raises a broad immune response, even in mice that were pre-immunised with SARS-CoV-2.

̽��ֱ��new vaccine is much simpler in design than other broadly protective vaccines currently in development, which the researchers say should accelerate its route into clinical trials.

̽��ֱ��underlying technology they have developed also has potential for use in vaccine development to protect against many other health challenges.

̽��ֱ��work involved a collaboration between scientists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford, and Caltech. It improves on previous work, by the Oxford and Caltech groups, to develop a novel all-in-one vaccine against coronavirus threats. ̽��ֱ��vaccine developed by Oxford and Caltech should enter Phase 1 clinical trials in early 2025, but its complex nature makes it challenging to manufacture which could limit large-scale production.

Conventional vaccines include a single antigen to train the immune system to target a single specific virus. This may not protect against a diverse range of existing coronaviruses, or against pathogens that are newly emerging.

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Reference: Hills, R A et al: ‘Proactive vaccination using multiviral Quartet Nanocages to elicit broad anti-coronavirus responses.’ Nature Nanotechnology, May 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41565-024-01655-9

Researchers have developed a new vaccine technology that has been shown in mice to provide protection against a broad range of coronaviruses with potential for future disease outbreaks - including ones we don’t even know about

Our focus is to create a vaccine that will protect us against the next coronavirus pandemic, and have it ready before the pandemic has even started.

Rory Hills

Stefan Cristian Cioata on Getty

Syringe and vaccine bottle

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Vulnerability to different COVID-19 mutations depends on previous infections and vaccination, study suggests

jg533 — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

A new study has found that people differ in how vulnerable they are to different mutations in emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2.

This is because the variant of SARS-CoV-2 a person was first exposed to determines how well their immune system responds to different parts of the virus, and how protected they are against other variants.

It also means that the same COVID-19 vaccine might work differently for different people, depending on which variants of SARS-CoV-2 they have previously been exposed to and where their immune response has focused.

̽��ֱ��discovery underlies the importance of continuing surveillance programmes to detect the emergence of new variants, and to understand differences in immunity to SARS-CoV-2 across the population.

It will also be important for future vaccination strategies, which must consider both the virus variant a vaccine contains and how immune responses of the population may differ in their response to it.

“It was a surprise how much of a difference we saw in the focus of immune responses of different people to SARS-CoV-2. Their immune responses appear to target different specific regions of the virus, depending on which variant their body had encountered first,” said Dr Samuel Wilks at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Centre for Pathogen Evolution in the Department of Zoology, first author of the report.

He added: “Our results mean that if the virus mutates in a specific region, some people’s immune system will not recognize the virus as well - so it could make them ill, while others may still have good protection against it.”

̽��ֱ��research, published today in the journal Science, involved a large-scale collaboration across ten research institutes including the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and produced a comprehensive snapshot of early global population immunity to COVID-19.

Researchers collected 207 serum samples - extracted from blood samples - from people who had either been infected naturally with one of the many previously circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants, or who had been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 with different numbers of doses of the Moderna vaccine.

They then analysed the immunity these people had developed, and found significant differences between immune responses depending on which variant a person had been infected with first.

“These results give us a deep understanding of how we might optimise the design of COVID-19 booster vaccines in the future,” said Professor Derek Smith, Director of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Centre for Pathogen Evolution in the Department of Zoology, senior author of the report.

He added: “We want to know the key virus variants to use in vaccines to best protect people in the future.”

̽��ֱ��research used a technique called ‘antigenic cartography’ to compare the similarity of different variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This measures how well human antibodies, formed in response to infection with one virus, respond to infection with a variant of that virus. It shows whether the virus has changed enough to escape the human immune response and cause disease.

̽��ֱ��resulting ‘antigenic map’ shows the relationship between a wide selection of SARS-CoV-2 variants that have previously circulated. Omicron variants are noticeably different from the others – which helps to explain why many people still succumbed to infection with Omicron despite vaccination or previous infection with a different variant.

Immunity to COVID-19 can be acquired by having been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or by vaccination. Vaccines provide immunity without the risk from the disease or its complications. They work by activating the immune system so it will recognise and respond rapidly to exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and prevent it causing illness. But, like other viruses, the SARS-CoV-2 virus keeps mutating to try and escape human immunity.

During the first year of the pandemic, the main SARS-CoV-2 virus in circulation was the B.1 variant. Since then, multiple variants emerged that escaped pre-existing immunity, causing reinfections in people who had already had COVID.

“ ̽��ֱ��study was an opportunity to really see - from the first exposure to SARS-CoV-2 onwards - what the basis of people’s immunity is, and how this differs across the population,” said Wilks.

This research was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and National Institutes of Health.

Reference

Wilks, S H et al: ‘Mapping SARS-CoV-2 antigenic relationships and serological responses.’ Science, October 2023. DOI: 10.1126/science.adj0070

10 October 2023: New projects to kickstart future vaccine development awarded UKRI funding

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� has been awarded £3.46 million by the UKRI as part of a consortium project, PROVAC: Evolutionarily smart vaccine strain selection for proactive vaccinology.

This project aims to enhance the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine strain selection process to provide the best possible protection for the UK population. It will predict which variants may emerge in the future and measure immune responses against this potential future evolution. This will enable researchers to choose the variant of the virus to use in the next vaccine.

Continual monitoring and updating of the variant is necessary to protect those at high-risk of complications from COVID-19, who will require further vaccinations against the evolving virus.

Professor Derek Smith at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Centre for Pathogen Evolution/ Department of Zoology will lead the consortium, which also involves researchers at Imperial College London, Francis Crick Institute, ̽��ֱ�� College London Hospitals, and the ̽��ֱ�� of Glasgow. ̽��ֱ��consortium is the direct result of the researchers’ substantial involvement in multiple aspects of the UK COVID-19 response.

̽��ֱ��award is made as part of UKRI’s five-year strategy Transforming Tomorrow Together 2022 to 2027 to harness the full power of the UK’s research and innovation system to tackle large-scale, complex challenges. In total £25m has been awarded to new projects to tackle epidemics and disease mutation.

Read UKRI's full award announcement here.

This page was originally published on 6 October 2023 and last updated: 10 October 2023.

A person’s immune response to variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, depends on their previous exposure – and differences in the focus of immune responses will help scientists understand how to optimise vaccines in the future to provide broad protection.

It was a surprise how much of a difference we saw in the focus of immune responses of different people to SARS-CoV-2.

Sam Wilks

Alexandra Koch on Pixabay

Virus variants

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Roadmap sets out new global strategy for development of more effective coronavirus vaccines

jg533 — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 13:39:58 +0000

A global strategy is launched today to coordinate the complex research activities necessary for a new approach to coronavirus vaccine development. ̽��ֱ��aim is to develop more effective, longer lasting vaccines against continually emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, and against new coronaviruses that may emerge in the future.

̽��ֱ��Coronavirus Vaccines Research and Development Roadmap (CVR) is led by the US Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the ̽��ֱ�� of Minnesota. It is the product of an international collaboration of 50 scientific experts from around the world, who forged a unified strategy to make these critically needed vaccines a reality.

“ ̽��ֱ��response of the scientific and medical communities to the development and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines has been incredible, but as new variants emerge and immunity begins to wane we need newer technologies. It’s vital that we continue to develop vaccine candidates to help keep us safe from the next virus threats,” said Professor Jonathan Heeney, Head of the Lab of Viral Zoonotics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and advisor on the international CVR Taskforce.

Heeney, who is also a Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, is leading an ongoing clinical trial to evaluate an innovative coronavirus vaccine he developed at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and spin-out company DIOSynVax. Administered needle-free using a blast of air, the vaccine primes the immune system to give a broader protective response to coronaviruses and is a step towards developing a future-proofed coronavirus vaccine.

Last year DIOSynVax was awarded $42 million from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the UK Government to support this work.

“ ̽��ֱ��COVID-19 pandemic marks the third time in just twenty years that a coronavirus has emerged to cause a public health crisis,” said Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, CIDRAP director, ̽��ֱ�� of Minnesota Regents Professor and McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health.

He added: “ ̽��ֱ��COVID-19 pandemic taught us the hard lesson that we must be better prepared. Rather than waiting for a fourth coronavirus to emerge — or for the arrival of an especially dangerous SARS-CoV-2 variant — we must act now to develop better, longer lasting and more broadly protective vaccines. If we wait for the next event to happen before we act, we will be too late.”

̽��ֱ��emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 was preceded by an epidemic in 2003 caused by a different coronavirus called SARS-CoV. Then, in 2012, the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, emerged. Coronaviruses can carry a high risk of death: for MERS-CoV, about one third of infections result in death, and approximately one in ten for SARS-CoV, although neither spreads easily from person to person.

In contrast, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, has a much lower fatality rate, but because it is so highly infectious between people, it had caused worldwide more than 650 million confirmed cases and 6.6 million deaths by the end of 2022. Even more concerning is the threat of a new coronavirus in the future that could be both highly transmissible and highly lethal. In addition, the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants may further jeopardise the significant protection provided by current vaccines against severe disease and death.

̽��ֱ��CVR confronts these extraordinary threats with a detailed, comprehensive and coordinated plan to accelerate the development of long-lasting, broadly protective coronavirus vaccines capable of preventing severe disease and death, and potentially protect against infection and transmission. ̽��ֱ��CVR further emphasises the goal that future broadly protective vaccines must be suitable for all regions worldwide, including remote areas and low- and middle-income countries.

̽��ֱ��report highlights different paths to success. One approach could involve a stepwise process, starting with vaccines to protect against variants of SARS-CoV-2. Another approach could focus on vaccines capable of protecting against multiple types of coronaviruses, including those likely to spill over from animals to humans in the future.

̽��ֱ��CVR summarises key barriers and gaps and outlines specific goals and milestones for advancing broadly protective coronavirus vaccines. ̽��ֱ��work is organised into five topic areas:

Virology. Developing broadly protective coronavirus vaccines requires learning more about the global distribution of coronaviruses circulating in animal reservoirs that have the potential to spill over to humans.
Immunology. Scientists need to learn more about human immunology, including research that will expand the breadth and durability of immune protection from vaccines and natural infection. Improved understanding of mucosal immunity may unlock new strategies to block infection.
Vaccinology. Identifying key preferred product characteristics will inform priorities and strategies for vaccine R&D and accelerate discovery. Leveraging new technologies and identifying the best methods to assess vaccine efficacy will further catalyse critical advancements.
Animal and human infection models for vaccine research. ̽��ֱ��limited availability of a range suitable animal models is a key barrier to developing broadly protective coronavirus vaccines. Additionally, work is needed to explore the potential role for the safe and effective use of controlled human infection models in coronavirus vaccine research.
Policy and financing. ̽��ֱ��successful development and global distribution of broadly protective coronavirus vaccines will require reinvigorating and sustaining a high level of political commitment and long-term investment in vaccine R&D and manufacturing.

“ ̽��ֱ��vaccines that we currently have for COVID-19 are the most important tool that we have in our battle against the pandemic,” said Charlie Weller, PhD, Head of Prevention, Infectious Diseases, at the Wellcome Trust. “But we can do better – by developing vaccines that give us broader protection – protection against new variants, protection from coronaviruses that have not yet emerged but might cause the next pandemic. We can discover new ways to deliver vaccines, such as skin patches or intranasal vaccines – and maybe even vaccines that could block transmission. This roadmap creates the structured plan that will give us the tools we need to better protect ourselves, our families and our communities around the world.”

̽��ֱ��report was developed with funding from ̽��ֱ��Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A scientific webinar on the CVR is planned for Thursday, April 20, 2023, 10:00-11:00 EDT. Register for the webinar here.

Reference

Moore, K.A. "A Research and Development (R&D) Roadmap for Broadly Protective Coronavirus Vaccines: A Pandemic Preparedness Strategy." February 2023, Vaccine. DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2023.02.032

Plan will accelerate a new approach to coronavirus vaccines research and development, to protect against COVID-19 variants and future pandemic threats from new coronaviruses

It’s vital that we continue to develop vaccine candidates to help keep us safe from the next virus threats

Jonathan Heeney

Andriy Onufriyenko, Getty

COVID-19 variants

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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COVID has increased trust in genetics, study finds

cg605 — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 15:37:45 +0000

̽��ֱ��pandemic has gone hand-in-hand with a much-increased public profile of science − genetics in particular. Be it the prominence of PCR testing or the development of vaccines, genetics has been in the spotlight in an unprecedented way. Given this, researchers from the Universities of Bath, Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, and Aberdeen wanted to know what the public felt about genetics and whether this new exposure of the science had made a difference.

̽��ֱ��Genetics Society funded and commissioned a survey of over 2,000 randomly selected British adults through a public polling company Kantar Public. ̽��ֱ��researchers found that as a baseline most people were trusting of genetic technologies before the pandemic. Nearly half (45%) reported they trusted it to work for the societal good, 37% were neutral on this question, while 18% said they did not, and only very few (1-2%) were strongly distrusting.

When asked if their trust in genetics had gone up through the pandemic, four times more people said their trust had increased than those who reported that it had gone down. Trust in science more generally had strongly gone up with a third of people saying it had increased.

̽��ֱ��results suggest that not only has trust in science gone up, but people want to hear more about it. Less than 10% thought that there was too much coverage of science in the media, while 44% reported that they want to hear more about it.

Anne Ferguson-Smith, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and International Partnerships and Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� and President of the Genetics Society said: “These results really challenge us to double our efforts. We need to rise to the new opportunity and the challenge created by the outcomes of this survey”.

Co-lead Professor Laurence Hurst of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the ̽��ֱ�� of Bath said: “this is potentially important to know – scientists have a tendency to stick in their labs, but it looks like, for the most part, the public not only trust us but that this trust has gone up somewhat and many want to hear more from us about our work.”

Professor Jonathan Pettitt, co-lead from the ̽��ֱ�� of Aberdeen said: “It is hard to see any upsides to the pandemic but perhaps this is one? We never knew that so many people wanted to hear more from scientists.”

Co-lead Professor Alison Woollard of the Department of Biochemistry at the ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford said: “We think we have established the limits of science communication. Despite all the talk of PCR over the last many months, we found that 30% hadn’t heard the term or knew it was a tool for testing for the virus. It is hard to see how any science can have more exposure than PCR has had. We need to be realistic and understand that, no matter what, we will never reach everyone. For informing people about things like vaccines this is important to know.”

Dr Adam Rutherford from the UCL department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment said: “We often hear that trust in science is at a low point, but what we found is that most people do trust the science of genetics as the basis of how we address global issues such as pandemics. However, scientists should not be complacent: we also found that the exposure of genetics during the pandemic made those suspicious of science more distrusting, despite the evidence. In a world where these voices can easily be amplified, we must be vigilant that our processes, methodologies and results are clearly and transparently communicated.”

Dr Cristina Fonseca, project coordinator for the Genetics Society, said “having a representative random survey is really vital and allows us insight into the true diversity of opinions.”

This article was adapted from a press release from the Genetics Society.

A survey of over 2,000 British adults finds that trust in genetics is high and went up significantly during the pandemic. It also finds that there is a hunger for more coverage of genetics.

These results really challenge us to double our efforts. We need to rise to the new opportunity and the challenge created by the outcomes of this survey.

Anne Ferguson-Smith

Sebastian Condrea / Moment via Getty Images

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Partnering with local hospitals during COVID-19

lw355 — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 09:20:13 +0000

From developing intensive care equipment to tackling supplies of PPE and oxygen, here's how a group of Cambridge researchers refocused and partnered with local hospitals during COVID-19.

Set up reserve lab capacity now for faster response to next pandemic, say researchers

jg533 — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 23:01:15 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, who were on the front line of the UK’s early response to COVID-19 in 2020, say a system of reservist lab scientists should to be set up now to provide surge capacity that will help the country respond faster – and more effectively – to future outbreaks of infectious disease.

They considered a number of options for providing scientific surge capacity and concluded that the best scenario would be a mix of highly skilled paid reservists, and volunteers who could be called on when required and trained rapidly.

In their report, published today in the journal ̽��ֱ��BMJ, the researchers say the lack of early COVID-19 PCR testing capacity had a knock-on effect on other health services in 2020. This included delaying the ability to make sure hospitals were COVID-secure and patients had surgery as safely as possible, and slowing down the identification of people with COVID-19 in the community – which delayed contact tracing.

“Because COVID-19 testing wasn’t scaled up quickly enough, we couldn’t detect all cases quickly enough to try and stop the spread of the disease,” said Dr Jordan Skittrall in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Pathology and first author of the report.

“It was frustrating to hear politicians’ promises to repeatedly scale up COVID-19 testing capacity during the early stage of the pandemic. ̽��ֱ��scale-up was extremely challenging: a lot of expertise is needed to get the tests working in the early stages of dealing with a new pathogen,” he added.

In early 2020, PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was a highly skilled job that required lab staff to undergo lengthy training. As the testing process was developed it became increasingly automated.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that the risk of another pandemic like COVID-19 happening is ever-present: there have been outbreaks of infectious disease throughout history. But nobody can say for sure when it will happen.

They suggest that effective preparation for the next pandemic includes recruiting a relatively small number of highly skilled scientists, who would be paid on retainer, to help in the initial phases of an emergency.

It would also involve a large reserve of volunteer staff to provide essential testing capacity; these people would not need to have specialist skills but could be trained quickly in an emergency and paid only when needed. Those working in sectors of the economy likely to close during a pandemic - such as entertainment and hospitality - would be ideal candidates as voluntary reserves, the researchers say.

“There’s an extent to which the emergence of an infectious disease is a random process, but a pandemic like COVID-19 is guaranteed to happen again at some point,” said Skittrall, who is also an Honorary Specialty Registrar in Infectious Diseases and Medical Virology at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, part of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

He added: “In the UK we’re in the privileged position of having the right scientific skills to respond to the next big outbreak. But we need to make sure that we have these people ready, so that when something does happen they can hit the ground running.”

As a clinician at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge Skittrall put his normal work on hold to help interpret COVID-19 test results in the lab in early 2020, and ensure the right clinical responses were carried out.

“In early 2020 we were working until late at night, with very few people processing tests for the whole country,” said Skittrall. “ ̽��ֱ��speed at which people were having to work, and the difficulty of trying to scale up the process in a busy hospital lab made me realise there was a real human bottleneck. We needed more people to process the tests.”

In their paper the scientists compare COVID-19 with other large-scale emergencies including war, where the military has a system of reservists for built-in surge capacity. But they say that unlike the military where reservists serve to deter warfare, having an ‘always-on’ capacity to deal with public health emergencies wouldn’t do anything to deter a new pandemic from emerging – and that’s why there has always been a pressure to close labs and streamline public health services.

Their suggested solution does not require sustained, cross-party political will to fund so is more likely to succeed; the researchers acknowledge there are many other pressures on the UK economy that must take priority.

They recommend that other countries should consider their requirements for surge capacity based on their own circumstances.

UK laboratories have now conducted over 200 million PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Reference

Skittrall, JP et al. ‘Preparing for the next pandemic: reserve laboratory staff.’ ̽��ֱ��BMJ, September 2022. DOI: 10.1136/BMJ-2022-072467

Researchers say a ‘human bottleneck’, due to historical cuts in public health funding, delayed the UK’s scale-up of COVID-19 testing in the early stages of the country’s pandemic response.

A pandemic like COVID-19 is guaranteed to happen again at some point.

Jordan Skittrall

Cultura RM Exclusive/Matt Lincoln

Female scientist in laboratory

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Justinianic Plague was nothing like flu and may have hit England before Constantinople

ta385 — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 08:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��Justinianic Plague is the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in west Eurasian history and struck the Mediterranean world at a pivotal moment in its historical development, when the Emperor Justinian was trying to restore Roman imperial power.

For decades, historians have argued about the lethality of the disease; its social and economic impact; and the routes by which it spread. In 2019-20, several studies, widely publicised in the media, argued that historians had massively exaggerated the impact of the Justinianic Plague and described it as an ‘inconsequential pandemic’. In a subsequent piece of journalism, written just before COVID-19 took hold in the West, two researchers suggested that the Justinianic Plague was ‘not unlike our flu outbreaks’.

In a new study, published in Past & Present, Cambridge historian Professor Peter Sarris argues that these studies ignored or downplayed new genetic findings, offered misleading statistical analysis and misrepresented the evidence provided by ancient texts.

Sarris says: “Some historians remain deeply hostile to regarding external factors such as disease as having a major impact on the development of human society, and ‘plague scepticism’ has had a lot of attention in recent years.”

Sarris, a Fellow of Trinity College, is critical of the way that some studies have used search engines to calculate that only a small percentage of ancient literature discusses the plague and then crudely argue that this proves the disease was considered insignificant at the time.

Sarris says: “Witnessing the plague first-hand obliged the contemporary historian Procopius to break away from his vast military narrative to write a harrowing account of the arrival of the plague in Constantinople that would leave a deep impression on subsequent generations of Byzantine readers. That is far more telling than the number of plague-related words he wrote. Different authors, writing different types of text, concentrated on different themes, and their works must be read accordingly.”

Sarris also refutes the suggestion that laws, coins and papyri provide little evidence that the plague had a significant impact on the early Byzantine state or society. He points to a major reduction in imperial law-making between the year 546, by which point the plague had taken hold, and the end of Justinian’s reign in 565. But he also argues that the flurry of significant legislation that was made between 542 and 545 reveals a series of crisis-driven measures issued in the face of plague-induced depopulation, and to limit the damage inflicted by the plague on landowning institutions.

In March 542, in a law that Justinian described as having been written amid the ‘encircling presence of death’, which had ‘spread to every region’, the emperor attempted to prop up the banking sector of the imperial economy.

In another law of 544, the emperor attempted to impose price and wage controls, as workers tried to take advantage of labour shortages. Alluding to the plague, Justinian declared that the ‘chastening which has been sent by God’s goodness’ should have made workers ‘better people’ but instead ‘they have turned to avarice’.

That bubonic plague exacerbated the East Roman Empire’s existing fiscal and administrative difficulties is also reflected in changes to coinage in this period, Sarris argues. A series of light-weight gold coins were issued, the first such reduction in the gold currency since its introduction in the 4th century and the weight of the heavy copper coinage of Constantinople was also reduced significantly around the same time as the emperor’s emergency banking legislation.

Sarris says: “ ̽��ֱ��significance of a historical pandemic should never be judged primarily on the basis of whether it leads to the ‘collapse’ of the societies concerned. Equally, the resilience of the East Roman state in the face of the plague does not signify that the challenge posed by the plague was not real.”

“What is most striking about the governmental response to the Justinianic Plague in the Byzantine or Roman world is how rational and carefully targeted it was, despite the bewilderingly unfamiliar circumstances in which the authorities found themselves.

“We have a lot to learn from how our forebears responded to epidemic disease, and how pandemics impacted on social structures, the distribution of wealth, and modes of thought.”

Bubonic plague in England

Until the early 2000s, the identification of the Justinianic Plague as ‘bubonic’ rested entirely upon ancient texts which described the appearance of buboes or swellings in the groins or armpits of victims. But then rapid advances in genomics enabled archaeologists and genetic scientists to discover traces of the ancient DNA of Yersinia pestis in Early Medieval skeletal remains. Such finds have been made in Germany, Spain, France and England.

In 2018, a study of DNA preserved in remains found in an early Anglo-Saxon burial site known as Edix Hill in Cambridgeshire revealed that many of the interred had died carrying the disease. Further analysis revealed that the strain of Y. pestis found was the earliest identified lineage of the bacterium involved in the 6th-century pandemic.

Sarris says: “We have tended to start with the literary sources, which describe the plague arriving at Pelusium in Egypt before spreading out from there, and then fitted the archaeological and genetic evidence into a framework and narrative based on those sources. That approach will no longer do. ̽��ֱ��arrival of bubonic plague in the Mediterranean around 541 and its initial arrival in England possibly somewhat earlier may have been the result of two separate but related routes, occurring some time apart.”

̽��ֱ��study suggests that the plague may have reached the Mediterranean via the Red Sea, and reached England perhaps via the Baltic and Scandanavia, and from there onto parts of the continent.

̽��ֱ��study emphasises that despite being called the ‘Justinianic Plague’, it was “never a purely or even primarily Roman phenomenon” and as recent genetic discoveries have proven, it reached remote and rural sites such as Edix Hill, as well as heavily populated cities.

It is widely accepted that the lethal and virulent strain of bubonic plague from which the Justinianic Plague and later the Black Death would descend had emerged in Central Asia by the Bronze Age before evolving further there in antiquity.

Sarris suggests that it may be significant that the advent of both the Justinianic Plague and the Black Death were preceded by the expansion of nomadic empires across Eurasia: the Huns in the 4th and 5th centuries, and the Mongols in the 13th.

Sarris says: “Increasing genetic evidence will lead in directions we can scarcely yet anticipate, and historians need to be able to respond positively and imaginatively, rather than with a defensive shrug.”

Reference
P Sarris, ‘New Approaches to the ‘Plague of Justinian’, Past & Present (2021); DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtab024.

‘Plague sceptics’ are wrong to underestimate the devastating impact that bubonic plague had in the 6th–8th centuries CE, argues a new study based on ancient texts and recent genetic discoveries. ̽��ֱ��same study suggests that bubonic plague may have reached England before its first recorded case in the Mediterranean via a currently unknown route, possibly involving the Baltic and Scandinavia.

We have a lot to learn from how our forebears responded to epidemic disease

Peter Sarris

Petar Milošević

Detail of the mosaic of Justinianus I in the Basilica di San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy

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