Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases (CBEID) research on viruses that cause tropical and emerging infectious diseases, as well as those that can be used as biological weapons, can be divided into arthropod-borne (arboviruses) and rodent-borne viruses, and those that rely on other reservoir hosts including humans. All but the latter groups are zoonotic viruses that utilize wild animals as reservoir hosts, and cause disease in humans and domestic animals following “spillover” of zoonotic cycles, or adaptation to use humans or domestic animals as amplification hosts.
- The arboviruses under intensive study include:
- West Nile virus (Drs. Higgs, Tesh, Estrada-Franco, Watts, Xiao, Barrett, Mason, Beasley, and Watowich)
- Venezuelan, eastern, and western equine encephalitis viruses (Drs. Weaver, Tesh, Estrada-Franco, Paessler, Mason, and Frolov)
- Yellow fever virus (Drs. Tesh, Barrett, Higgs, Mason, Watts, and Beasley)
- Rift Valley fever virus (Drs. Peters, Makino, Morrill, Frolov, and Tseng)
- Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (Drs. Watts and Holbrook)
- Dengue viruses (Drs. Mason and Barrett)
- Omsk hemorrhagic fever virus (Dr. Holbrook)
- Tick-borne encephalitis virus (Drs. Fox and Holbrook)
The approaches used to study these viral diseases include basic research on the ecology and epidemiology (Drs. Weaver, Tesh, Estrada-Franco, and Higgs), virus–vector interactions (Drs. Weaver, Tesh, Higgs, Estrada-Franco, and Watts), viral replication (Drs. Mason, Bourne, Frolov, Tseng, Peters, and Makino), pathogenesis (Drs. Tesh, Watts, Barrett, Weaver, Xiao, Peters, Tseng, and Aronson), antiviral treatment (Drs. Barrett, Aronson, Herzog, Weaver, Gorenstein, Watowich, Fox, and Luxon), and vaccine development (Drs. Weaver, Barrett, and Luxon) through the Sealy Center for Vaccine Development.
Rodent-borne viruses such as arenaviruses and hantaviruses are also studied using ecological (Dr. Fulhorst), pathogenesis (Drs. Aronson, Peters, and Herzog), and antiviral development (Drs. Aronson, Gorenstein, Herzog, and Luxon) approaches. Other emerging, zoonotic viral diseases under study include the newly discovered SARS coronavirus (Drs. Makino, Peters, Tseng, and Watts) and monkeypox (Drs. Tesh, Xiao, and Watts).
The non-zoonotic diseases under study include RNA viruses that cause hepatitis A, B and C (Drs. Lemon, Shih, Bourne, and Watowich), influenza and other respiratory viral infections (Drs. Roberts, Paessler, Tesh, and Nichols), other human herpesviruses (Drs. Simmons, Stanberry, and Hudnall) and HIV (Drs. Cloyd, O’Brien). Other CBEID members have more generic interests in tropical and emerging viral pathogens including Dr. Davey (viral receptors and diagnostic tools) and structural biology (Drs. Gorenstein, Watowich, Popov, Fox, and Luxon).
Most of the funding for virology research programs comes from the NIAID-sponsored Western Regional Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research grant, traditional Principal Investigator grants, and other NIH and CDC grants. Arthropod- and rodent-borne viruses are also collected and studied by the Emerging Viral Disease Unit and the World Reference Center for Arboviruses under the direction of Dr. Robert Tesh. Some of the viruses under study in the CBEID are classified as biosafety level 4 agents that require special containment in the Robert E. Shope, MD Laboratory in the John Sealy Pavilion for Infectious Diseases Research (also known as the BSL4 laboratory). Additional facilities for virology research include the W. M. Keck Center for Virus Imaging located in the Blocker Medical Research Building, and the Galveston National Laboratory, which will abut the existing BSL4 laboratory when it is completed in 2008.
Training of many virology graduate students and postdoctoral fellows is supported by the McLaughlin Fellowship Fund, as well as the NIH T32 predoctoral and postdoctoral training grants on tropical and emerging infectious diseases and biodefense (PIs are Drs. Roberts, Weaver, and Barrett), and a CDC-funded fellowship training program in vector-borne infectious diseases (PI is Dr. Higgs).