The identification of Bornavirus nucleic acids in 1989 demonstrated the power of molecular technology for pathogen discovery and provided the resources required to launch a research program focused on emerging infectious diseases at the University of California. During the past decade we have recruited an extraordinary international faculty comprised of creative, dedicated individuals who are not inhibited in their criticism of the lab director or one another, love the chase, and happily challenge and overturn doctrines and protocols. I had no doubt that our team would succeed when we were asked by New York State last September to isolate the causative agent of encephalitis, establish diagnostic tests, or find antiviral drugs for treatment of infection. Much attention has been directed to the emergence and reemergence of acute infectious diseases like West Nile virus encephalitis. Responsible factors include enhanced international travel and trade, increasing population density, deforestation and enhanced interaction of humans and wildlife, and perhaps global warming.
Some pundits are also concerned about bioterrorism.
We are both creating instruments and reagents with which to rapidly identify infectious agents and actively pursuing surveillance in regions of the globe where new microbes are anticipated to appear. As proud as I am of this work and our contributions to recognition and control of West Nile virus, I also appreciate that capturing such low hanging fruit is straightforward in comparison with other projects now initiating in infectious diseases. Here I am referring to investigating the role of microbial agents in the pathogenesis of cancer, rheumatologic, cardiovascular, endocrine, and central nervous system disorders. There is mounting evidence to indicate that microbes and even vaccines can cause disease via cryptic infection, hit and run mechanisms, or eliciting immune responses that crossreact with normal tissues to induce autoimmunity. I am convinced that the application of pathogen discovery technology to chronic diseases will reveal discoveries as important as those promised by the genome project.