NIH, Wuhan were working on monkeypox

Wuhan Institute of Virology published on monkeypox research 3 months ago, NIH also have been researching monkeypox treatment

Total funding, $9,824,009

The funding supports a clinical trial to identify effective treatments for monkeypox

A re-emerging pathogen

A disease of epidemic potential

Causes significant morbidity and can result in death

Human cases have been increasing in sub-Saharan Africa since 2000

Sporadic outbreaks outside of Africa have occurred

Similarity between MPXV and the variola virus,

coupled with concerns about the potential of the variola virus as a potential bioterrorism agent,

have placed monkeypox treatments at the forefront of public health and scientific research agendas in many countries.

Article in Virologica Sinica?

Efficient assembly of a large fragment of monkeypox virus genome as a qPCR template using dual-selection based transformation-associated recombination (Feb 2022)

Since MPXV infection has never been associated with an outbreak in China, the viral genomic material required for qPCR detection is unavailable.

Using viral DNA recombinations

Transformation-associated recombination (TAR),

to assemble large DNA constructs

A 55-kb genomic fragment of monkeypox virus in VL6-48B (yeast cells)

What is Virologica Sinica?

Virologica Sinica, the official journal of Chinese Society for Microbiology,

will serve as a platform for the communication and exchange of academic information and ideas in an international context.

Discussion section

However, this DNA assembly tool applied in virological research could also raise potential security concerns,

especially when the assembled product contains a full set of genetic material that can be recovered into a contagious pathogen.

Recently, a group of scientists was funded by a biotech company to synthesize a full-length horsepox virus genome and recover it into an infectious virus (Noyce et al., 2018).

Not surprisingly, such a controversial achievement has received enormous attention and raised global debate on its biosecurity implications (DiEuliis et al., 2017; Koblentz, 2017, 2018; DiEuliis and Gronvall, 2018).

In this study, although a full-length viral genome would be the ideal reference template for detecting MPXV by qPCR, we only sought to assemble a 55-kb viral fragment, less than one-third of the MPXV genome.

This assembly product is fail-safe by virtually eliminating any risk of recovering into an infectious virus while providing multiple qPCR targets for detecting MPXV or other Orthopoxviruses (Li et al., 2010).

Our world in data monkeypox

Spain and Belgium ‘gay events’

UK

Cases, + 11 = 190

20,000 doses of a smallpox vaccine

offered to close contacts of those diagnosed with monkeypox

reduce the risk of symptomatic infection and severe illness

Dr Rosamund Lewis, WHO

It's very important to describe this because it appears to be an increase in a mode of transmission that may have been under-recognised in the past

unfortunate if monkeypox exploit the immunity gap left by smallpox 40 years ago

there is still a window to close the outbreak