WHO Urges Investment in SARS Vaccine

YEOH EN-LAI : Associated Press Writer
Jun 19, 2003 : 8:12 am ET

SINGAPORE -- As SARS subsides, governments need to pour more money into finding a vaccine to prevent the virus from striking again in a mutated form, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

The coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome is mutating faster than previously thought -- making vaccine research difficult, but even more necessary, said Marie-Paule Kieny, head of the World Health Organization's Initiative for Vaccine Research.

"The number of mutations is up. How difficult it is to come up with a vaccine? We will know in the coming months," she told a WHO-sponsored conference on SARS research in Singapore.

Governments cannot afford to rely solely on private pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine against the flu-like illness that has killed about 800 people and sickened more than 8,400 worldwide, mostly in Asia.

New cases spiked in March and April, but have plunged in recent weeks.

"Vaccine manufacturers have to make profits," she said. "If the market for SARS disappears, then their involvement, understandably, will reduce."

Previously researchers had said that although the coronavirus must have mutated to jump from animals to humans, it didn't appear to be mutating rapidly and on the contrary appeared remarkably stable.

However, several scientists speaking at the conference presented fresh evidence that the coronavirus which causes SARS is mutating and could evolve into something more dangerous.

"How mutable is SARS? The mutations allow for species jumping. It is highly adaptable to humans," said Michael Lai from the University of Southern California's department of microbiology and immunology.

Research must focus on the transforming virus and how it could mask itself from current models of detection, Kieny said.

"The virus evolves," she said. "We have to monitor its diversity and its potential evolution."

About 500 scientists and doctors attended the conference, held a day after another WHO conference in neighboring Malaysia where countries shared lessons they learned battling the deadly illness.

The slowdown in the spread of the virus has given scientists time to delve deeper into vaccine and mutation research, said Mark Salter, the head of the WHO's global alert system.

"In the coming weeks, new and innovative ideas will come to the fore," Salter said.

"Failure in the face of SARS is not an option," he said.