Definite Identification and Sequencing of SARS Virus

A network of 13 laboratories from all over the world, formed by the World Health Organization (WHO, Geneva, Switzerland) to find the cause of acute severe respiratory syndrome (SARS), has announced the identification of the SARS pathogen as a member of the coronavirus family never before seen in humans.

The researchers have named the pathogen "SARS virus.” WHO and the network of laboratories have dedicated their detection and characterization of the virus to Dr. Carlo Urbani, the WHO scientist who first alerted the world to SARS and who died from the disease in Bangkok (Thailand) in March 2003.

"Today, the collaboration continues as top laboratory researchers have come to WHO to design the next steps, a strategy for transforming these basic research discoveries into diagnostic tools that will help us to successfully control this disease,” said Dr. David Heymann, executive director of WHO communicable diseases programs.

Only days earlier, Canadian researchers had completed the sequencing of a coronavirus felt to be responsible for SARS and now confirmed, which is expected to lead to the development of definitive diagnostic tests for SARS and to an understanding of why the virus is so deadly. The sequence is posted on the website of the British Columbia Cancer Agency's Genome Sciences Center.

WHO scientists said this new member of the coronavirus family may have mutated from animals into humans. Concurrently, researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC, Atlanta, GA, USA) have finished their own sequencing of the virus. The new genetic information will be useful in developing a rapid diagnostic test and perhaps a vaccine. To date, there have been more than 3,000 cases of SARS, most occurring in China and Hong Kong.





Related Links:
WHO
BC Genome Sciences Center