Coronavirus

Researchers with Boston University developed a strain of COVID-19 that killed 80 percent of mice infected with it, according to a pre-print study released last week, prompting concern and condemnation.

A team of researchers from Boston and Florida extracted the Omicron variant’s spike protein, which they noted has “an unusually large number of mutations.” The researchers then attached Omicron’s spike protein, which is a structure that allows a virus to bind and invade human cells, to the original Wuhan COVID-19 variant that reportedly emerged in late 2019 and dubbed it “Omicron S.”

“In K18-hACE2 mice, while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection,” they wrote (pdf), “the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80 percent. This indicates that while the vaccine escape of Omicron is defined by mutations in S, major determinants of viral pathogenicity reside outside of (Omicron) S.”

“We generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 isolate and compared this virus with the naturally circulating Omicron variant,” the researchers said. “The Omicron S-bearing virus robustly escapes vaccine-induced humoral immunity, mainly due to mutations in the receptor binding motif (RBM), yet unlike naturally occurring Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells.”

The researchers noted, however, that mice and human immune systems differ greatly. As a result, if the Omicron-S hybrid were to infect humans, it would be unlikely to be as deadly, they noted, adding that the breed of mice that was used is more dissimilar to humans than other breeds subject to laboratory testing.

However, when they infected human cells with the Omicron-S variant, they found that it was five times more infectious than the Omicron strain of COVID-19.

The study’s publication drew online condemnation and concern.

Dr. Paul Hunter, an expert in infectious diseases at England’s University of East Anglia, told the Daily Mail on Monday he was concerned about what laboratories are capable of producing.

“The issue is what you’re going to be using [the labs] for,” Hunter told the tabloid. “If they’re for diagnostic purposes, then you need them. But I don’t think every country needs a BSL-4,” he said, referring to the top level of biosecurity used in laboratories. Boston University’s research lab has a biosecurity level of four.

He added: “If they start having a dual purpose for research that has offensive military implications, that is the concern.”

There has been widespread speculation that scientists at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, may have contributed to the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan. Although Chinese Communist Party officials have officially blamed the emergence of the virus on a wet market in the Chinese city, some U.S. intelligence officials in 2021 said they believe COVID-19 either was created inside the lab or had escaped from the facility.

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