Oct 25, 2022
Lab in Maryland plans to develop more severe monkeypox strain
- NIAID research will see experts swap genes between two monkeypox strains
- They will attempt to make currently dominant clade more lethal and infect mice
- The aim of the project is to spur the development of better drugs for humans
- But it comes amid growing concern about virus manipulation research in labs
- It comes just a week after DailyMail.com revealed a similar experiment involving a hybrid Covid strain was conducted at Boston University.
- The latest monkeypox study is being funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a research arm of National Institutes of Health (NIH).