The US government lifted a temporary ban on research to develop an animal model for the (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) MERS virus, a coronavirus lethal spread of camels to the people of the Middle East.
October 17, in an unusual move, the US government stopped federal funding for studies on risk SEAS, SARS or influenza tweak these viruses to make them more pathogenic or transmitted by breathing in the mammals. Among the 18 arrested were at least five projects to work on adapting the MERS virus into mice to generate a strain that sickened animals. This could facilitate studies aimed at understanding the virus and developing vaccines and medicines.
The financial break came as a shock to MERS researchers. At various meetings, including one at the National Academy of Sciences this week, they argued that the development of an animal model for MERS is crucial to tackle the virus, which has infected at least 938 people and killed a third of them. They asked for an exemption set out in the moratorium policy, which allows to continue work "urgently necessary to protect public health."
This exemption has now been approved for at least some of these projects. "We are very happy," said Matthew Frieman of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, who received a call from her program officer at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) yesterday. NIAID researcher intramural Kanta Subbarao said its project to develop a rabbit model for MERS was also exempted, and the National Institutes of Health has not responded to a request on other projects at the time of release
* update, December 18, 3:20 p.m. :. NIH confirmed today that the five projects working on a mouse model for MERS were . exempted from the break Two influenza studies have also been granted an exception; no application for exemption were rejected
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