Lessons from responding to pandemics and studying bat viruses/immunity
In the three decades or so, we have had multiple zoonotic diseases outbreaks caused by bat-borne viruses or viruses with ancestral lineages in bats: Hendra in Australia (first detected in 1994), Nipah in Malaysia/Singapore (1998/9), SARS outbreak (2002/3), MERS outbreak (2012), large scale Ebola virus outbreak (2014) and SARS-CoV-2 (2019/20). Bats are now known as one of, if not, the most important reservoirs of different virus families, yet bats carry these viruses in a largely asymptomatic manner. Bats are also the longest living mamma relative to body size. In this presentation, I will discuss the lessons learnt from studying bat-borne emerging zoonotic viruses and bat immunology in the context of better preparing for future pandemics and translating “bat knowledge” into improving human health in general.
Date:
22 April 2024, 14:00 (Monday, 1st week, Trinity 2024)
Venue:
Big Data Institute, Old Road Campus OX3 7LF
Venue Details:
Seminar Room 0 & 1
Speaker:
Professor Linfa Wang (Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore)
Organising department:
Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine
Organiser:
Savita Anderson (PSI, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
savita.anderson@ndm.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Professor Sarah Gilbert (Said Professor of Vaccinology, University of Oxford)
Part of:
Pandemic Sciences Institute seminar series
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Savita Anderson
