Poxviruses

The Poxvirus Section has a capacity for accurate and rapid diagnosis of all human poxvirus infection, including vaccinia, monkeypox, cowpox and parapox virus infections.

This capability is important to provide a rapid response in the rare event of an outbreak involving poxviruses and emerging human poxvirus infections. This could occur, for example, if a person infected with one of these agents arrived in Canada.

This section also conducts research to develop and to apply vaccinia virus based system for studies of viral pathogens that pose a risk to the health of Canadians, such as SARS, H5N1influenza virus, or 2009 H1N1.

Recent research achievements:

• Use of the vaccinia virus vector MVA for candidate vaccines.
• Development of a vaccinia virus based system for studies of viral modulators of innate immune responses, which provides useful information for effective vaccine development.
• Application of a vaccinia virus based system for studies of influenza virus NS1 proteins for an international collaborative project, partially funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.