PANDEMIC RESPONSESAVE: Pandemic's Urgency Drove New Collaborative Approaches Worldwide

In a paper in the journal Nature, Los Alamos National Laboratoryscientists Bette Korber, Hyejin Yoon, Will Fischer and James Theiler, among nearly 130 authors from institutions around the world, describe their groundbreaking collaborative work, “Defining the risk of SARS-CoV-2 variants on immune protection.”

Korber, Fischer, Yoon and Theiler are members of a rarified team that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases assembled in January 2021, drawing on experts from around the world who specialize in relevant research fields such as viruses, the immune system, vaccines, epidemiology, structural biology, bioinformatics, virus genetics, and evolution. The team is called SAVE, for SARS-CoV-2 Assessment of Viral Evolution.

As noted in the Nature paper, the authors state, “This effort was designed to provide a real-time risk assessment of SARS-CoV-2 variants potentially impacting transmission, virulence, and resistance to convalescent and vaccine-induced immunity. The SAVE program serves as a critical data-generating component of the United States Government SARS-CoV-2 Interagency Group to assess implications of SARS-CoV-2 variants on diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics and for communicating public health risk.”

Broad Model for Rapid Response
SAVE focuses on mutations in SARS-CoV-2 and emerging virus variants. But its members say the global collaborative concept “is a broad model for rapidly responding to evolving pathogens with pandemic potential.”

“Over the past two decades, we have witnessed the emergence/re-emergence of several RNA viruses, including West Nile virus, H1N1 influenza virus, chikungunya virus, Zika virus, SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV and Ebola virus, that have threatened global public health,” the paper’s summary states. “Developing collaborative programs between academic, industry and commercial partners is essential to respond to rapidly evolving viruses,” said Marciela DeGrace of NIAID, the paper’s lead author.

SAVE members represent 58 different research sites located in the United States and around the world. Members participate within three sub-groups:

·  Early Detection and Analysis

·  In Vitro – what they can learn using flasks, beakers and tubes

·  In Vivo – what they can learn in animal models that mimic human disease

Early Detection Methods
Korber’s team was part of the Early Detection and Analysis team, where such high-impact work as the initial identification of mutations in the virus made waves in the scientific community before its capacity for mutation had been clearly understood and accepted.