Harvard Affiliates Discover Possible SARS Cure

Within six months of discovering the virus, a research team including two Harvard scientists has isolated a protein that attacks the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.

Dr. Wayne A. Marasco and Jianhua Sui, immune system experts at the Harvard affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, are senior and first author respectively on a report which appeared this week in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The antibody has been proven to disable the virus in a Petri dish and in unpublished animal studies, said Marasco, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

But the protein still needs to be tested on humans, he said.

Marasco predicted that the work on the potential cure for the highly infectious and sometimes fatal disease, which killed nearly 800 people last year, will enter the clinical stage in 2005.

He said the discovery of the 80R antibody was a major accomplishment in international medical cooperation, coming only six months after the identification of the SARS coronavirus, in the same classification as the common cold.

“We believe this is unparalleled in the area of emerging infectious diseases,” Marasco wrote in an e-mail.

Marasco and Sui led a team including researchers from Dana-Farber, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Children’s Hospital Boston.

The team began its research in July last year and isolated eight antibodies; in August, one antibody proved to be an effective viral inhibitor.

The antibody is a human monoclonal antibody, called 80R. By binding to the receptor of the virus (ACE2) in the animal cell, 80R prevents SARS virus from binding to and affecting the living cell.

Marasco said that SARS continues to be a threat to world health—though the major outbreak which generated headlines across the globe last spring ended in July, China reported several cases this winter.

He warned that we are only beginning to understand the disease and its human-to-human transmission.

“What is perhaps most concerning is that the four cases of SARS that have occurred in Guangdong province China this year have not involved animal contact,” Marasco said.

Chinese scientists have also been working towards a cure. This week one group of researches began selecting human volunteers for a SARS vaccine, according to the China Daily newspaper.

Alex J. Lee ’06, president of the Chinese Students’ Association, said he believes SARS has afflicted more than the health of China’s citizens.

“The CSA believes that a cure for SARS...would alleviate [many] of the problems that are occurring now in China, as well as a number of the tensions created between China and other countries,” he said.

Karen Chang Kwok ’05, the Public Relations representative of the Harvard Hong Kong Society, said that people in Hong Kong felt the most afraid during the outbreak last spring, but still do.

“I couldn’t go home in the summer of 2003,” said Karen. “Because my parents wouldn’t let me.”