Monkeypox outbreak to be tackled by £2m consortium involving University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is among 12 UK institutions that will work together to tackle the monkeypox outbreak by developing better diagnostic tests, identifying potential therapies, studying the effectiveness of vaccines and exploring the spread of the virus.

The consortium has £2million in funding from the Biotechnology and Biosciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council - part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) - for the work.

Among the 25 scientists involved are Cambridge scientists Prof Geoffrey Smith, from the Department of Pathology, and Prof Mike Weekes, from the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research and Department of Medicine.

Prof Weekes said: "Monkeypox has become a really important global pathogen, reaching more than 50 countries worldwide in a matter of months. Although we have an effective vaccine and treatment, global roll-out has so far proved challenging, emphasising the importance of a comprehensive understanding of this virus.

“The UK consortium includes researchers from multiple different disciplines, and I anticipate the data we generate will rapidly help understand how the virus can be targeted in new ways to prevent disease.”

Professor Smith said: “Few would have predicted that monkeypox virus would be causing a global epidemic in 2022. The ability to respond quickly to this new challenge has been helped greatly not just by the swift and welcome response of UKRI, but also by decades of support for the study of orthopoxviruses from UKRI and the Wellcome Trust. The information gained from those studies is valuable in the fight against monkeypox virus.”

The current worldwide outbreak outside of West Africa, where it originated, was identified in May 2022. It was the first time that many monkeypox cases and clusters have been reported in non-endemic areas.

There have been more than 3,400 confirmed cases since May in the UK, although case numbers are currently falling. Most of the cases have affected men who have sex with men.

The World Health Organisation reports that it has spread to 106 countries and territories with 25 confirmed deaths.

The consortium is led by the Pirbright Institute and the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research and researchers will work with government agencies including the Animal and Plant Health Agency, the UK Health Security Agency and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory to study the outbreak and inform the public health response in the UK and internationally.

Prof Bryan Charleston, co-lead from The Pirbright Institute, said: “The implications of the current monkeypox outbreak are huge. As well as tackling the current outbreak, we also need to be fully prepared for the next outbreak, because worldwide there’s a huge reservoir of infection.

“One of the key ways we can do this is to develop rapid tests, which are very important to help clinicians on the front line to manage the disease.”

The consortium will develop new point-of-care tests, such as lateral flow or LAMP tests, which could be made at scale and used in low and middle-income countries.

The team will screen potential drugs using human cells, study how the virus infects humans and its susceptibility to the immune response, to help identify targets for new therapies.

They will also characterise the genome of the virus and explore how it evolution, including how that is linked to changes in transmission or pathology.

They will study the immune response to the virus and the vaccine, identify animal reservoirs and potential spill-over routes of transmission between animals and humans.

They will also study the effectiveness of the smallpox vaccine by tracking the immune responses after primary and secondary vaccination of up to 200 individuals.

Professor Massimo Palmarini, co-lead from the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, said: “Monkeypox is public health challenge, so taking decisive, collective action to better understand this virus is paramount. By bringing together research expertise in different areas, we will harness the UK’s world-leading knowledge to learn more about how the virus works and spreads and provide the foundations for the development of potential new treatments.”

Prof Melanie Welham, executive chair of BBSRC, said: “One of the real strengths of the UK’s scientific response to disease outbreaks is the way that we can draw on leading researchers from all over the country, who can pool their expertise to deliver results, fast. Long-term support for animal and human virus research has ensured we have the capability to respond with agility.

“This new national consortium will study the unprecedented monkeypox outbreak to better understand how to tackle it. This will feed rapidly into global public health strategies, developing new diagnostic tests and identifying potential therapies.”