Eliasberg Family Foundation Funding Helps Track Avian Flu H5N1 Mutations
For nearly two decades, the Eliasberg Family Foundation's support for Andy Pekosz’s infectious disease lab has powered his team to stay one step ahead of the trickiest viruses—those that cause influenza, Zika, and COVID-19. Now, they are chasing avian flu, aiming to quickly pivot findings into public health interventions.
In the Bloomberg School's Pekosz Lab, the team studies mutations in the H5N1 virus which could enable it to jump from domestic poultry to the human population and cause human disease, possibly even spurring a pandemic. (pictured: MMI professor Andy Pekosz and research associate Jaiprasath Sachithanandham)
Pekosz’s team studies seasonal influenza A and B, SARS-CoV-2, and enterovirus-D68, along with emerging respiratory viruses like avian influenza A (H5N1), which originated in wild birds. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pekosz Lab worked to isolate, grow, and characterize that virus and its mutations and provided data and samples to groups developing the vaccines.
“It’s this basic research that really drives all of those observations that eventually lead to a new vaccine, a new antiviral,” Pekosz says. “We are a bit more prepared for an H5N1 pandemic than we were for COVID-19 because basic research efforts have provided us the blueprint for how to make a good avian flu vaccine.”
Pekosz credits the critical role of private philanthropy for these advances. Support from funders like the Eliasberg Family Foundation helps his team tackle emergent issues at a faster pace and fuels the evidenced-based research needed to compete for federal grants.
“Private philanthropy really forms some of the seed funding to do those first few experimental systems, to really solidify an idea, and then go to the federal funding agencies with a much stronger and more complete case for why this research needs to continue to be funded,” he says. Pekosz notes that his team provides their findings to the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which are tracking these viruses on national and international levels to enact proper guidelines to protect public health.
For Pekosz specifically, the latest gift from the Eliasberg Family Foundation is a full-circle moment, as it was a gift from them that enabled Dean Emeritus Mike Klag to recruit Pekosz to the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Bloomberg School in 2007. Their continued support also helped create the Johns Hopkins Center of Excellence in Influenza Research and Response.
Pekosz's team grows the most recent virus variants to characterize them in terms of how they’re infecting healthy cells, how many new virus particles are made, and how they express proteins.
“And the most recent gift from the Eliasberg Family Foundation is really allowing us to continue to respond to emerging virus infections without delay,” explains Pekosz, adding this support is used to hire and train doctoral and post-doc researchers, “to train that next generation of research scientists on real-world, important problems.”
One recent finding of Pekosz’s research team shows the H5N1 avian virus doesn’t currently replicate well at the human body temperature.
“Understanding what it would take to become better at replicating at our body temperatures will give really important insight on how close it is to becoming a real human pathogen, but now is the time to act before it gets any more of a concern,” Pekosz says.
This story first appeared on the Johns Hopkins University "Why I Give" site and has been adapted by Bloomberg School senior development writer Suzanne Flinchbaugh. For more information about the Pekosz Lab, other infectious disease research, or to inquire about supporting other work at the School, please contact Reggie Jackson, senior associate director of development, at reggiej@jhu.edu.