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| Edited By: Maitri Porecha |Source: DNA |Updated: Apr 09, 2017, 08:00 AM IST
Professor Richard Kuhn, Head, Department of Biological Sciences and Director, Purdue Institute for Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Diseases, USA, was recently in India for talks with Indian institutes working on genetic engineering for research collaboration on zika virus study.
With over 48,000 cases reported in South America and the US, a new round of field research has been started on the zika virus last week in Brazil. It was Kuhn and his team, who cracked the structure of the virus and the antibodies that fight it, were discovered only three weeks ago.
Prof Kuhn speaks to DNA on why India should be prepared against the zika virus threat and where the research to fight it is headed.
The structures of zika, dengue, and chikungunya viruses are similar; they belong to the same family of flavivirus. After having discovered the intricacies of the structure of the zika virus, which is a breakthrough, we are in talks with institutes in India like The International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, for cross-collaborations and exchanging notes on the study of virus structures.
Once you are treated for zika, it does not relapse. And as more and more people in a region get infected, they also grow immune to the virus. Though the zika virus isn’t present in India, there is a reason to worry. Zika is spread by Aedes Aegypti mosquito, the same breed that spreads dengue. While zika has not raised its head in India yet, dengue is endemic here. Also, only one in five who have zika virus exhibit symptoms. The other four are latently infected; they carry the virus but do not show symptoms, and hence, can infect others. In India, there’s huge number of patients infected with dengue, whose symptoms zika mimics. Therefore, it is important to have diagnostic mechanisms to differentiate the two. It is better to be equipped and prepared by putting research in place. This is important since in currently infected countries, it will be on a weaning curve, but in countries where it poses a potential threat, it will only rise.
Only three weeks ago, a team of scientists from Purdue University were able to explain how the structure of zika virus looks.
If you have an infection, your body develops an immune response against the virus. We have been interested in how an antibody — the front-line attack your body uses against the virus — bind to the virus and kill it.
Antibodies from patients infected with zika were extracted and tested on mice infected and not infected by zika. Those injected with human antibodies recovered faster. The structure of these antibodies was explained too, right up to their atomic level. The understanding of the structure can help interrupt that process; and provide answers to whether the antibodies will be most effective as a therapeutic agent or as a molecular drug.
The symptoms of a patient suffering from zika or dengue are very similar — that of flu, fatigue, and body ache. So, when a patient comes to the doctor, zika could pass off as dengue, because current commercially available tests do not readily distinguish between the two. Novel engineering techniques for more specific differentiation of these viruses at an early stage are in the pipeline.
Death from zika is very rare. However, the rate of children born with microcephaly (a congenital brain anomaly) to infected mothers was huge. We have been observing outbreaks for only two years now, so we will have to keep a close tab on children who may get infected in-vitro and later have developmental problems with hearing for example, which may not be apparent right at birth. It might get worse than how we conceive it at present.
