Hong Kong and Dutch scientists make breakthrough in battle against global flu outbreaks
Team, led by an expert from the University of Hong Kong, says it has developed a technique to predict if virus will spread to humans
A team of Hong Kong and Dutch scientists say they have developed a cutting-edge technique to help predict whether an emerging virus will have outbreak potential in humans, an important advance in the battle against the next flu pandemic.
The group, led by University of Hong Kong flu expert Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, created the “mature airway organoid culture system” – or so-called organs in a dish – which mimic the respiratory tract from the nose to the bronchus using adult stem cells from lung tissue.
A US provisional patent application has been filed for the platform and the findings will be published on Tuesday morning in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said Yuen, who is Henry Fok professor and chair professor in infectious diseases at HKU’s Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine.
The team included Dr Jane Zhou Jie, a research assistant professor at HKU’s department of microbiology, and Professor Hans Clevers’ Hubrecht Institute laboratory in the Netherlands.
Yuen said no reliable model existed to predict which new animal virus – bird flu or swine flu – would spread to humans.
The team used adult stem cells harvested from lung tissue in their work.
Zhou said the scientists came up with the concept of the respiratory organoid and “then we tested influenza virus infections”.
Four types of emerging flu viruses were tested.