Australian scientists develop lab version of corona-virus
Australian scientists develop lab version of corona-virus |
A team of scientists in Australia said Wednesday they had
successfully developed a lab-grown version of the corona-virus that may help
efforts to diagnose and treat the disease spreading in China and overseas.
While the scientists at the Peter Doherty Institute for
Infection and Immunity in Melbourne called their work a “significant
breakthrough” that will allow for accurate investigation and diagnosis of the
virus globally, the CEO of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis said Wednesday
it will take at least a year to find a vaccine.
“The reality is, it will take over a year in my expectation
to really find a new vaccine for this so, we need to really use epidemiological
controls to really get this situation in a better place,” Vas Narasimhan told
CNBC in Basel, Switzerland, the headquarters for the pharmaceutical company.
The researchers in Australia said they were able to grow a
copy of the virus from an infected patient. They said the copy could be used as
“control material” for testing and “will be a game changer for diagnosis”.
The laboratory-grown virus is expected to be used to
generate an antibody test, which allows detection of the virus in patients who
have not yet displayed any symptoms.
“An antibody test will enable us to retrospectively test
suspected patients so we can gather a more accurate picture of how widespread
the virus is, and consequently, among other things, the true mortality rate,”
Dr Mike Catton, deputy director of the Doherty Institute, told the London
Telegraph. “It will also assist in the assessment of effectiveness of trial
vaccines.”
He said scientists at the institute had been planning for an
incident like this for many, many years and that’s really why we were able to
get an answer so quickly.”
The institute said it would share its work with the World
Health Organization (WHO) in the hope it could improve efforts to treat and
diagnose the virus, which was first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It
has killed 132 people and infected nearly 6,000 in China and abroad.
Australian scientists develop lab version of corona-virus
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