Some of the world's leading flu researchers on Wednesday proposed to make potentially risky experiments with the H7N9 avian influenza virus, saying it "is necessary and should be done" to fully assess the virus' potential risk.

In a letter published both by Science and Nature, two prominent scientific journals, a total of 22 researchers, including Guan Yi from the University of Hong Kong, discussed the current risk posed by the H7N9 virus, which has infected more than 130 people in China since March, with 43 deaths.

"Although this A (H7N9) outbreak is now under control, the virus (or one with similar properties) could re-emerge as winter approaches," they wrote. "To fully assess the potential risk associated with these novel viruses, there is a need for further research, including experiments that may be classified as 'gain of function' (GOF)."

The researchers also argued that such GOF experiments involving the creation of easier-to-spread versions of H7N9 could "provide information that can assist surveillance activities -- thus enabling appropriate public-health preparations to be initiated before a pandemic."

The proposed experiments included the evaluation of immunogenicity, adaptation, drug resistance, transmission and pathogenicity of H7N9, they wrote.

The researchers also detailed the safety and security precautions that they would take to prevent the possibly dangerous viruses they create from accidentally or deliberately being released from a lab.

The letter, the researchers said, is intended to avoid a replay of the 2011 controversy over the creation of lab strains of another avian flu virus, H5N1, that could transmit between ferrets.

"With H5N1, we were criticized for not being transparent," virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, one of the scientists at the center of the H5N1 storm and a lead author of the letter, told the Science magazine. "So this time we want to be sure the public understands what we want to do before we do it, why we need to do it, and how we are going to do it safely."

Opinions are divided over Wednesday's proposals in the scientific world.

"In creating mammalian-transmissible versions of H7N9, scientists would go a step further and hope to identify combinations of mutations that could increase virus

transmissibility in ferrets or other models. Such work could yield information on the biological principles affecting transmission," Nature said in an editorial. "But nature could well come up with combinations for transmission that are different from those obtained in experiments."

Some researchers such as Professor Wendy Barclay, chair in influenza virology at the Imperial College London thought that such studies should be welcomed.

"The gain-of-function experiments are a natural extension of the work that has already shown limited transmissibility of the wild type virus -- it would be ludicrous not to do them," Barclay said.

Others, however, disagreed. "The scientific justification presented for doing this work is very flimsy, to put it mildly, and the claims that it will lead to anything useful are lightweight," Adel Mahmoud, an infectious disease specialist at the Princeton University told the Science magazine.

The security precautions are "insufficient and amazingly lame," molecular biologist Richard Ebright of the Rutgers University added.

Also published in both Science and Nature, a related letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided the Department's official statement regarding the oversight it will require for H7N9 influenza virus gain-of- function research.

The HHS announced that any HHS-funded studies "that are reasonably anticipated to generate H7N9 viruses with increased transmissibility between mammals by respiratory droplets will undergo an additional level of review by the HHS."

"The review will consider the acceptability of these experiments in light of potential scientific and public-health benefits as well as biosafety and biosecurity risks, and will identify any additional risk-mitigation measures needed," the HHS added.

Source: Xinhuanet