This paper published in November 2015 appears relevant to the current
pandemic The authors report on the experimental creation of a chimeric
virus that could not be neutralised by vaccine; they include various US
epidemiologists, the FDA and 2 Chinese researchers from Wuhan -
presumably the latter supplied the horseshoe bat virus that was
subsequently modified to a more infectious form in the lab.
*Abstract*
The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus
(SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV underscores
the threat of cross-species transmission events leading to outbreaks in
humans. Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus,
SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat
populations^1 <https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985#ref-CR1> . Using
the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system^2
<https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985#ref-CR2> , we generated and
characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus
SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that
group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can
efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human
angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in
primary human airway cells and achieve /in vitro/ titers equivalent to
epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, /in vivo/ experiments
demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable
pathogenesis. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and
prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody
and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection
with CoVs using the novel spike protein. On the basis of these findings,
we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant
virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both /in vitro/ and /in
vivo/. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from
viruses currently circulating in bat populations.
The full paper is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985#auth-1
