EAGER: Infectious Norovirus Persistence in Water

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Norovirus is considered to be responsible for most infections resulting from exposure to sewage contaminated water. Assessing risk posed by norovirus requires the ability to accurately measure and cultivate them in water. Unfortunately, at present we cannot readily culture norovirus in the lab. We also lack suitable molecular probes to rapidly and accurately measure norovirus. Recent studies using human intestinal enteroids (HIE) have shown promise as a technique to enable accurate cultivation of norovirus. The goal of this project is to develop HIE as a tool to characterize infectious norovirus persistence in water. Achieving this goal will require evaluating the agreement between the HIE technique and other tools to assess the accuracy of the method. Successful completion of this work will enable the use of HIE methods as a rapid and accurate measurement tool for norovirus. The proposed project will have significant benefits to society and education through improved norovirus monitoring and control efforts to protect human health in water, food, and recreation. In addition to these societal benefits, the proposed project will contribute to the training of an environmental engineering PhD student in cutting-edge norovirus cultivation approaches.Norovirus is an important waterborne pathogen that likely accounts for the majority of infections resulting from exposure to sewage contaminated water. Measuring norovirus persistence and inactivation in water is complicated by a lack of suitable molecular or surrogate methods and an inability to culture norovirus the laboratory. We propose to address this limitation by developing a novel cultivation approach using human intestinal enteroids (HIE). This approach is based on promising results showing HIEs have enabled reproducible cultivation of norovirus. This tool will be used to characterize infectious norovirus persistence in water and results compared to culture, molecular, and surrogate measures for validation. Cultivation of norovirus in HIE remains highly specialized. Thus, successful validation of this approach represents a potentially transformative advance in understanding infectious norovirus persistence in water. It would also enable future investigations of infectious norovirus fate in other environmental matrices. Such advances would have broad benefits to society, particularly in the fields of drinking water, air, food, agriculture, and recreational water management. The proposed project will have significant benefits to society and education. Accurate measurement and forecasting of norovirus may allow us to proactively respond to outbreaks, reducing the disease burden. In addition to technical results, the proposed project will contribute to the training of an environmental engineering PhD student in cutting-edge norovirus cultivation approaches and research results will be disseminated widely via journal publications and a conference presentation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.