U taking lead role in bird flu fight

University of Minnesota scientists will be at the forefront of the race to find a vaccine to prevent the worldwide spread of bird flu, having won a $22.5 million federal contract to track the disease.

The U is one of six sites across the nation to receive seven-year contracts for the new Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance. Eventually 60 to 70 people will be working with the U center from Minnesota to Thailand, tracking viruses among waterfowl, poultry and swine and taking blood from people where there have been outbreaks of bird flu.

"We will be keeping our finger on the pulse of avian influenza," said Dr. Marguerite Pappaioanou, principal investigator and professor of infectious disease and epidemiology at the U's School of Public Health.

"This is important information in the bigger picture on how to prevent these viruses from becoming pandemic."

There have been flu pandemics before, notably in 1918 when more than 50 million people worldwide died. But concern over a killing flu that races across the globe has intensified since the H5N1 avian influenza virus began killing people in Asia in 1997. Since 2003, according to the World Health Organization, at least 170 people in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe have died, and the virus has been found in poultry and wild birds.

That virulent strain of bird flu hasn't been detected in the Americas yet. The new influenza research centers, funded by the National Institutes of Health, are intended to boost flu research by trying to figure out how the viruses cause disease and how they spread between animals and from animals to people.

Looking for resistance

The U's center is one of two that will focus mostly on tracking influenza viruses among animals. Wild birds sometimes act as reservoirs for the viruses, Pappaioanou said, and the center will work with bird rehabilitation groups, game preserves and hunters along the Central Flyway from Canada to the Gulf Coast to test waterfowl for viruses that can be studied and typed.

The center also will monitor live bird markets in the Northeast and in Chicago, wild birds in Vietnam and Laos, and commercial poultry operations in other Asian countries.

Though Minnesota is one of the nation's top poultry-producing states, the state has never had a highly contagious and deadly outbreak of flu in poultry, Pappaioanou said. She said that over several decades, there have been three serious outbreaks elsewhere in the United States.

Swine operations in the Midwest and possibly North Carolina also will be tested for viruses, she said, because pigs are considered "the mixing vessel" for flus. Swine can catch the disease from birds and people and may be an important link in the way flus evolve and spread.

Pappaioanou said one reason the U got the federal contract was its research partnerships, including one with Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. In that country, 17 people have died of the H5N1 form of avian flu since 2003. The university has medical and veterinary colleges and has been instrumental in genetic typing of that virus.

Scientists from the Thai institution will go into rural Thai villages, drawing samples from poultry, wild birds, pigs, dogs, cats and, with their consent, local residents.

The researchers will be looking especially for people who appear to have some resistance to the virus. "When you see a tally of victims of the virus, 60 percent of those people have died," Pappaioanou said. "But what about people who were in contact [with the virus] but maybe didn't get sick?"

Some people may not even know they were infected because their body fought off the infection, Pappaioanou said. Samples of their blood and its antibodies could be one key to eventually developing a vaccine.

The U center expects to collect 5,000 to 8,000 specimens a year. Once the center has identified and classified them, some samples may be sent to other influenza centers that are working on human immunity and antiviral medicines.

The other research centers are at Emory University, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the University of Rochester, the University of California at Los Angeles and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Mary Jane Smetanka • 612-673-7380 • smetan@startribune.com