To Fight a Virus, Get a Virus: Military Bets on Mutant Pathogen
- Army interested in funding research for bioterrorism defense
- A treatment that could evolve along with lethal infections
A pair of brothers working in laboratories on opposite coasts of the U.S. are brewing a new approach to fighting viruses, one that’s drawn interest from the military for protection against the threat of infections such as Zika and Ebola.
The experimental treatment pursued by Ariel Weinberger, a Harvard University biologist, and Leor Weinberger, a virologist at the University of California at San Francisco-affiliated Gladstone Institutes, deploys a tweaked, safe version of a virus to overwhelm the form that invades and kills cells. While it’s very early -- the approach has only been tested in test tubes and animals -- the U.S. government is ready to invest in developing the idea and seeing whether similar mutants can protect against other diseases.