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UK draws up new disease-threat watch list

25 March 2025

The UK has a new watch list of 24 infectious diseases that could pose the greatest future threat to public health

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NHS warns of sharp rises in flu cases

3 January 2025

NHS chiefs have reported that the number of people in hospital with flu has quadrupled in England over the past month. This number is rising "at a very concerning rate".

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Broad-spectrum antivirals

15 August 2024

Recent UK government report on the need to develop broad-spectrum antivirals for current and future national and global needs.

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Covid-19 antiviral drug thapsigargin excites researchers in early tests with ‘one of a kind’ results

16 December 2021

A researcher at a British university believes he may have found a unique new antiviral drug that can stop the cause of Covid-19, could be made into a pill, tackles respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza, and crucially would not encourage drug resistance.

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One drug to rule them all

3 February 2021

A team led by Kin-Chow Chang (University of Nottingham, UK), in collaboration with colleagues at China Agricultural University (Beijing, China), The Pirbright Institute and the Animal and Plant Health Agency (both UK), has uncovered the broad antiviral potential of a drug – thapsigargin – that could influence how future pandemics are managed.

One drug to rule them all

Research

Al-Beltagi, S., Goulding, L.V., Chang, D.K.E., Mellits, K.H., Hayes, C.J., Gershkovich, P., Coleman, C.M. and Chang, K.C. (2021a)

Emergent SARS-CoV-2 variants: comparative replication dynamics and high sensitivity to thapsigargin

Virulence 12 (1) 2946-2956.

Al-Beltagi, S., Preda, C. A., Goulding, L. V., James, J., Pu, J., Skinner, P., Jiang, Z., Wang, B.L., Yang, J., Banyard, A.C., Mellits, K.H., Gershkovich, P., Hayes, C.J., Nguyen-Van-Tam, J., Brown, I.H., Liu, J. and Chang, K.C. (2021b).

Thapsigargin is a broad-spectrum inhibitor of major human respiratory viruses: coronavirus, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza A virus.

Viruses 13(2).

Goulding, L.V., Yang, J., Jiang, Z., Zhang, H., Lea, D., Emes, R.D., Dottorini, T., Pu, J., Liu, J. and Chang, K.C. (2020)

Thapsigargin at non-cytotoxic levels induces a potent host antiviral response that blocks influenza A virus replication.

Viruses 12:1093.

Jiang, Z., Wei, F., Zhang, Y., Wang, T., Gao, W., Yu, S., Sun, H., Pu, J., Sun, Y., Wang, M., Tong, Qi., Gao, C., Chang, K.C. and Liu, J. (2021)

IFI16 directly senses viral RNA and enhances RIG-I transcription and activation to restrict influenza virus infection.

Nature Microbiology 6: 932-945.

Li, Q., Jiang, Z., Ren, S., Guo, H., Song, Z., Chen, S., Gao, X., Meng, F., Zhu, J., Liu, L., Tong, Q., Sun, H., Sun, Y., Pu, J., Chang, K.C. and Liu, J. (2022)

SRSF5-mediated alternative splicing of M gene is essential for influenza A virus replication: a host-directed target against influenza virus.

Advanced Science 9(34) 2203088 (https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202203088)

Sun, H., Li, H., Tong, Q, Han,Q, Liu, J., Yu, H., Song, H., Qi, J., Li, J., Yang, J., Lan, R., Deng, G., Chang, H., Qu, Y., Pu, J., Sun, Y., Lan, Y., Wang, D., Shi, Y., Liu, W.J., Chang, K.C.,Gao, G.F. and Liu, J. (2023)

Airborne transmission of human-isolated avian H3N8 influenza virus between ferrets.

Cell 186:4074-4084.