Risk of Viral Emergence from Bats

描述(由调查人员提供)：新出现的人畜共患病对全球公共卫生和我们的经济构成重大威胁。大多数是由野生动物宿主越来越频繁地出现的病原体引起的(例如来自黑猩猩的艾滋病毒-1，来自蝙蝠和果子狸的SARS CoV，来自果蝠的尼帕病毒)。仅这一组疾病每年就导致数万人死亡，一些疫情(如SARS)给全球经济造成了数百亿美元的损失。然而，尽管EID对社会、人口和经济产生了巨大的影响，但我们在理解这些野生动物人畜共患病如何出现的潜在过程以及制定预防未来出现的预测性方法方面进展甚微。开发预见性和前瞻性的人畜共患病新出现方法是医学科学面临的一个关键挑战。新的人畜共患病经常以一种看似随机的方式从野生动物身上出现，从全球不同的地区，从种类繁多的野生动物物种中出现。我们理解这一过程的驱动力的能力受到以下因素的阻碍：对导致出现的过程缺乏严格的分析；我们缺乏对野生动物中经常出现新的人畜共患病的微生物多样性的了解；以及我们对致病因素的缺乏理解，这些因素解释了为什么一些病毒能够跨越物种障碍，而另一些病毒则不能。在这一应用中，我们汇集了一个由新兴疾病生态学家和模型师、病毒生物信息学家和分子病毒学家组成的多学科团队，他们在各自领域处于领先地位，已经合作研究人畜共患病的出现。根据初步数据，证明蝙蝠是一个重要的野生动物储存库，并且蝙蝠的出现是由一系列人为驱动因素造成的，该小组将1)为未来出现蝙蝠病毒建立全球“热点”的预测模型；2)使用大量蝙蝠生物样本库在这些“热点”中对已知和未发现的蝙蝠病原体进行有针对性的监测，阐明蝙蝠“病毒体”的未知多样性；以及3)使用一系列体外技术(包括蝙蝠细胞培养中的感染)，检查这些新病毒的发病机制，以及尚未在人类中出现的现有蝙蝠病毒池。这种多学科方法是第一次共同努力，以了解与最近出现的SARS、Nipah、Hendra、埃博拉和马尔堡病毒有关的一组关键野生动物宿主内出现的过程的深度和广度。与公共卫生相关新出现的人畜共患病(如艾滋病毒/艾滋病、流感)是全球健康的主要威胁，每年在美国和国外造成数万人死亡，其中一些是最近从蝙蝠身上出现的(SARS、埃博拉、尼帕)。这项研究提供了一种方法来预测下一个蝙蝠新出现的人畜共患病最有可能出现的地区，并建议对这些地区进行有针对性的监测。 在这些地区使用最先进的分子技术的动物。它将确定新病毒的特征，并研究这些病毒的发病机制，以及一组尚未在人类种群中出现的已知蝙蝠病毒：因此，这是一种预测性的、主动的方法，以对抗最引人注目的新兴病原体群体。

DESCRIPTION (provided by investigator): Emerging zoonoses are a significant threat to global public health and our economies. The majority are caused by pathogens that emerge with increasing frequency from wildlife hosts (e.g. HIV-1 from chimpanzees, SARS CoV from bats and civets, Nipah virus from fruit bats). This group of diseases alone causes tens of thousands of deaths each year, and some outbreaks (e.g. SARS) have cost the global economy tens of billions of dollars. However, despite the huge social, demographic and economic impact of EIDs, there has been little advance in our understanding of the underlying process of how these wildlife zoonoses emerge, and in developing predictive approaches to prevent future emergence. Developing predictive and proactive approaches to zoonotic emergence is a key challenge to medical science. New zoonoses emerge regularly from wildlife in a seemingly random way, from disparate regions of the globe, and from a wide diversity of wildlife species. Our ability to understand what drives this process is hampered by a lack of rigorous analyses of the processes that cause emergence; our lack of knowledge of the diversity of microbes in wildlife (the `zoonotic pool') from which new zoonoses regularly emerge; and our poor understanding of pathogenic factors that explain why some viruses are able to cross the species barrier while others are not. In this application, we bring together a multidisciplinary team of emerging disease ecologists and modelers, viral bioinformaticists, and molecular virologists who are leaders in their fields, and who have already collaborated together to study zoonotic disease emergence. Building on preliminary data that demonstrates bats are a key wildlife reservoir, and that emergence is due to a range of anthropogenic drivers, this team will 1) develop predictive models of global `hotspots' for the future emergence of bat viruses; 2) use a large repository of bat biological samples to conduct targeted surveillance in these `hotspots' for known and undiscovered bat pathogens, elucidating the unknown diversity of the bat `virome' and; 3) using a range of in vitro techniques (including infection in bat cell culture), examine the pathogenesis of these new viruses, and a pool of available bat viruses which have not yet emerged in humans. This multidisciplinary approach represents the first, concerted effort to understand the depth and breadth of the process of emergence within a key group of wildlife hosts associated with the recent emergence of SARS, Nipah, Hendra, Ebola and Marburg viruses. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Emerging zoonoses (e.g. HIV/AIDS, Influenza) are a major threat to health globally, causing tens of thousands of deaths each year in the USA and abroad and a number of these have emerged from bats recently (SARS, Ebola, Nipah). This research provides a way to predict the regions where the next new emerging zoonoses from bats is most likely to emerge, and proposes targeted surveillance of these animals using state-of-the- art molecular techniques in those regions. It will characterize new viruses, and study the pathogenesis of these, and a bank of known bat viruses that have not yet emerged in the human population: It is therefore a predictive, proactive approach to combating the most high profile group of emerging pathogens.