#27 – Summer Update: What's Happening in Virology Right Now

00:00:05: Now, the last story that I wanted to mention is science paper.

00:00:08: That recently came out and it's broadly discussed not just in virology but also in society And this is a paper about a virus that was generated by artificial intelligence Virological with Florian Kramer.

00:00:46: Hello and welcome to this episode of virological.

00:00:49: This was recorded on August ninth of twenty ninety six in New York.

00:00:54: So i thought do a little bit of a virology update today.

00:01:00: There's number stories that are worth mentioning, some of them don't warrant the full episode but I think it is interesting to mention these things and so we're kind doing.

00:01:12: four little were affected by disease.

00:01:29: It's super hot in Europe right now and so I think one of the ideas was that this is caused by heat, which might be a reason for these diseases.

00:01:39: The animals showed fever, diarrhea, loss of appetite... ...and also lost milk production.

00:01:47: And symptoms typically lasted from fourteen to twenty-one days.

00:01:51: None of those cows died but there was proper investigation.

00:01:55: they turned out no This was not just a heat, maybe the heat kind of made these animals more susceptible.

00:02:02: But this was actually a virus and so The Swiss Institute of Virology and Immunology which is the reference lab for viruses in Switzerland... ...the University of Birn announced few days ago that they found what caused their outbreak And denounced it had- They have found new vatopunia virus That belongs to the Simbu group mortoponia viruses.

00:02:27: Now, this is a new virus but relatives of these virus are known quite well in the veterinary field.

00:02:36: one of the very closely related viruses is Schmalenberg virus.

00:02:40: that's a virus that was discovered I believe in Europe in two thousand eleven and also causes similar disease in animals in livestock.

00:02:55: So, this group of viruses is well known and these new virus causes similar symptoms.

00:03:02: What has been seen also with Schmalenberg virus and other viruses in the Simbu Group?

00:03:07: that in pregnant animals infection can cause abortions or fetal malformation.

00:03:13: not sure if it was seen now in Switzerland but there's a potential for this.

00:03:18: new or the Bonnier virus could cost as well.

00:03:22: Just a little bit about ordopunia viruses.

00:03:24: I'm not going to go into too much detail today, but ordopuna viruses are RNA viruses that have three genomic segments.

00:03:33: Most of their genome is negatively polarized.

00:03:37: They have these typical large medium and small segments and they also have a lipid envelope that is covered in a glycoprotein.

00:03:45: They're eighty to one hundred twenty nanometers in diameter, we've talked about some of these ordopunia viruses before And will talk about them in the future.

00:03:56: As I said i didn't want go into too much detail here because there's number different news stories today.

00:04:03: What it known as most related virus are transmitted by midges mostly collicoida species.

00:04:13: And in Europe, typically these matches show up in July and then increase in prevalence until September.

00:04:21: So it's very likely that there is more cases of this virus infections.

00:04:27: There are also already reports from southern Germany which borders Switzerland.

00:04:32: Of course That their cases to my knowledge they're no case yet in Austria but this is certainly something to watch.

00:04:41: These viruses don't have a lot of zoonotic potential, what do you mean by zoonic potential?

00:04:47: Zoonotic means that an animal virus crosses from animals to humans.

00:04:51: This not something which has been observed with similar viruses and so it's very unlikely That these are the threat for humans But of course its problem for the farmers.

00:05:01: And if the milk production goes down then thats problematic too.

00:05:07: So that's one of the recent news stories.

00:05:10: The other is an update on the Bundy Bujio Ebola outbreak in the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

00:05:19: We have had a episode about this outbreak already.

00:05:22: when it started and even back then It was relatively large and expanding And since then unfortunately the case numbers have increased quite a bit.

00:05:33: Specifically In last few weeks cases has been going up quite fast.

00:05:39: So on july twenty fourth the DRC reported already more than three thousand cases, and on august seventh so not that long thereafter they reported four thousand cases ,and now the case count is approximately four thousand one hundred cases in approximately thousand nine hundred deaths .So thats a pretty bad situation.

00:06:02: this The only one that was bigger, the West African Ebola's year outbreak.

00:06:12: That happened about ten years ago and it doesn't seem like its slowing down.

00:06:18: It seems there is actually a lot more cases lately.

00:06:23: I don't think theres any new case in Uganda.

00:06:27: thats the neighboring country that initially also had cases.

00:06:30: i think There were no new cases detected here And since I recorded an episode when they started There have been also now two cases that had been treated in Germany.

00:06:42: So they didn't occur in Germany, They were evacuated to Germany for treatment and there was one case in France And all three of these individuals survived the infection.

00:06:53: When we look at the DRC most of this infections are still happening In the Ituri province.

00:06:59: About ninety percent of cases occurred here.

00:07:03: But Altuele I probably butchered pronunciation, the Autouale province is also affected.

00:07:11: North Kivu is affected and Chobo is effected And I think that's a district to the west.

00:07:17: so there have been cases there as well.

00:07:21: So in general it doesn't look good.

00:07:25: The expectation is that case numbers will go up In next few weeks or months.

00:07:29: It might take long time for this outbreak.

00:07:33: There are some good news here.

00:07:36: In July a number of clinical trials started in response to this boondibugia outbreak.

00:07:42: First of all, clinical trial started two test treatments.

00:07:45: one of them is remdesivir the other one is mpp-hundred thirty four.

00:07:51: that's a monoclonal antibody treatment.

00:07:53: it's a cocktail of antibodies and so those trials started.

00:07:58: Two phase I trials with boondipugia specific vaccines started.

00:08:03: So those were developed now very quickly.

00:08:06: One of them is based on the adenovirus platform, the JADOX platform we know that very well from the pandemic and AstraZeneca vaccine.

00:08:17: so their same platform was not being tested for boondibugio.

00:08:21: in this case they had no virus vector expressing the glycoprotein of Ebola boondipugio.

00:08:28: And until this trial as a phase one started and a second phase one trial started that was a vaccine or is it a vaccine developed by Moderna, so there's an mRNA vaccine.

00:08:41: And that Phase One trial started in Canada.

00:08:44: So typically with these new vaccines its not well received when you start this early clinical trials in countries that are affected specifically if it's low- and middle income country.

00:08:54: Typically as done on the two cases this trial starts with early clinical development high-income countries, in this case the UK and Canada.

00:09:05: And if these results look promising then they are moved into their outbreak area.

00:09:10: What is being tested for the DRC is Ebola Zaire vaccine.

00:09:17: So this vaccine doesn't fit the Bundy Bujio strain of Ebola.

00:09:21: It was made against Ebola Zarea but that's a licensed vaccine based on the vesicular stomatitis virus.

00:09:28: so it started to face retrial with this vaccine in the DRC to see if there is any effect that the vaccine could have against Bundy Bujju.

00:09:38: The reason why they are doing this, because a monkey model and non-human primate model... ...there was some protection by that vaccine even though it doesn't fit the strain.

00:09:50: And so their hope is maybe there's an effect which would already be much better than having nothing.

00:09:57: And so these things are now ongoing and we'll see how they turn out.

00:10:03: But of course there is a lot hope that the phase one trials with this specific vaccines will work, then that these vaccines could be used to help mitigate their outbreak... ...and of course treatments would also very important.

00:10:19: Then has been news about a new Anders virus infection in Europe.

00:10:25: That's interesting but it not related to cruise ship at all.

00:10:29: So this news came out very recently.

00:10:31: The French authorities reported that they had tested somebody positive for Anders virus, This was a person who is described as Franco-Argentinian tourist so I guess it's someone who has French and Argentinean lives in Argentina then came to France And the person spent last two weeks of July in France Had mild symptoms.

00:10:54: he was then tested and has since traveled to Spain, from what I've read the person had no symptoms anymore but is isolating now in Spain.

00:11:04: And contact tracing is ongoing.

00:11:07: The assumption here that this person got infected still in Argentina before travel.

00:11:12: then the symptom started when he was already in France.

00:11:18: But there's also not much information about his case out.

00:11:22: But I guess there's not a lot of danger for the general public in this case.

00:11:27: And again, as i said contact tracing is ongoing.

00:11:30: now The last story that I wanted to mention is science paper That recently came out and it's broadly discussed Not just in virology but also society.

00:11:40: This is about a virus that was generated by artificial intelligence.

00:11:46: So this study was done as a collaboration between Stanford University in California and ARC Institute, which is the research institute that I think it's also located in California.

00:11:56: And they were trying to use AI basically programed at similar to JetGPD but for genes anyway.

00:12:06: The program called EVO To make artificial viruses.

00:12:10: They didn't do anything dangerous at all.

00:12:13: they basically played around with bacteriophages.

00:12:16: So bacteria phages are viruses that infect and kill bacteria, so it's a good thing some of these bacteria phage are actually in development as therapeutics for bacterial infections.

00:12:28: This is not dangerous per se!

00:12:31: They use the Bacteria Phage called Phi X-hundred seventy four... ...and they used genomic information on that Bacterian phage and basically similar Bacterial Viruses.

00:12:43: And they trained this algorithm, this EVO.

00:12:46: Basically it's JET-GPD like program and asked to make synthetic versions new version of a similar bacteriophage.

00:12:59: The program actually did came out with about seven hundred thousand genomes that it proposed and the researchers at Stanford then selected about three hundred I think two hundred eighty five and they made them, so you can just synthesize the genomic information.

00:13:18: And then you can transform that into bacteria.

00:13:21: if the genome actually works in codes for a viable virus Then the virus will be generated in the bacteria.

00:13:30: it'll start to grow in the bacterium.

00:13:32: It would kill the bacteria.

00:13:33: They did this with two hundred eighty five sequences.

00:13:37: The program gave them out of these two hundred ninety-five Sixteen actually worked.

00:13:43: So in sixteen cases when they took information that this program, this artificial intelligence software gave them synthesized the genomic information and then brought it into bacteria a virus actually formed And started to kill these bacteria.

00:14:00: Now as I said This is not dangerous at all.

00:14:03: These bacteriophages are everywhere.

00:14:05: They killed bacteria.

00:14:06: so That's basically good thing.

00:14:08: In many cases It's not dangerous for humans.

00:14:11: But of course, it opens up a whole discussion about using AI to make viruses because hypothetically you could do something similar and then ask

00:14:21: A.I.,

00:14:21: to make a virus like influenza virus but maybe a new one that our immune system hasn't seen or that has a feature that can circumvent some parts of our immune systems where... You can ask potentially A. I. To make an influenza virus that is more deadly or transmits better right?

00:14:40: So Of course, this leads to a whole new discussion about how dangerous it is.

00:14:46: What regulations are in place for research like that?

00:14:50: and if AI could be used to make dangerous agents?

00:14:57: of course there would have been more discussions specifically when you take into account They already relatively heated discussions about biosafety and biosecurity in the United States, but I think it's a really warranted discussion because of course bad actors could make something using artificial intelligence that can be problematic for humans or livestock.

00:15:27: So those were the four stories that I wanted to cover today.

00:15:30: They're relatively short and mixed, but i found them interesting and worth mentioning.

00:15:35: Next time we are going do a full episode again It might not be about viruses.

00:15:40: it may also be an interesting finding regarding the immune system cancer and tattoos.

00:15:47: so stay tuned.

00:15:48: i'll have to see if put in episodes on this together.

00:15:51: That was for today.

00:15:55: New mystery virus in Switzerland that infects cows.

00:15:59: An update about the Bundy-Budjo Ebola outbreak, a new undisclosed case in Europe and AI derived viruses that can kill bacteria.

00:16:10: Thanks for listening.

00:16:12: I hope you found it interesting.

00:16:13: As always if there's questions comments concerns please just write an email to Virological at podcastworkstud.com And If You Like The Podcast you Can Always Support Us On Steady.

00:16:25: Thanks for listening in and until next time.

00:16:42: Bye!