New Way To Predict Animal-human Virus Transmission

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2018-06-12 HKT 04:07

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  Professor Yuen Kwok-Yung, Chair of Infectious Diseases at HKU’s Department of Microbiology, (left), and Zhou Jie, a research assistant professor. Photo: RTHK

The University of Hong Kong has announced that it's developed a ground-breaking method to effectively predict what kind of flu viruses will spread from animals to humans.

The research team said reliable results were seen by establishing “mature airway organoids” - which are miniature respiratory organs in vitro that can mimic the characteristics of the original human tissues.

It said by infecting these organoids with different strains of flu viruses, it can tell which type of viruses would grow and destroy the cells....which would show they're most likely to infect humans and cause an outbreak.

Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, who heads the research, said other studies around the world weren't able to develop such mature organoids that can be sustained for over a year.

He said the new method will be highly useful in trying to predict the next epidemic in Hong Kong.