COVID-19: From bats, pangolin to coronavirus and serology
Published: 20 Apr 2020
The “COVID-19: Updates from Singapore” weekly webinar series is a forum for leading clinicians, scientists, public health officials and policy makers with expertise in SARS CoV-2 and its associated infection COVID-19 to share insights into their field of study.
The second session on Thursday 16 April at 7pm featured discovery updates and perspectives from this week’s invited speaker, Professor Wang Linfa.
Prof Wang is the Director of the Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore.
Titled “COVID-19: From bats, pangolins to coronavirus and serology”, Prof Wang outlined how the novel coronavirus could have originated from bats, the possible role of pangolins and observations on genetic mutations of this coronavirus. From there, he provided a perspective of the role serology plays in identifying strains and in tackling the COVID-19 outbreak.
WATCH: COVID-19 Updates from Singapore: Webinar 2 | Prof Wang Linfa
Prof Wang is an expert in the field of zoonotic diseases, bat immunology and pathogen discovery. His early research was at the Monash Centre for Molecular Biology and Medicine. In 1990, he joined the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) where he played a leading role in identifying bats as the natural host of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus. His research then extended from bat-borne viruses to better understand virus-bat interaction and how bats co-exist with a large number of viruses without developing clinical diseases. His recent research contributions include developing antibody based serological tests to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for the COVID-19 outbreak, and the early and successful culture of the virus from an infected patents sample. His team is also working together with local and international partners to develop new vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19.
Tune in for this week’s “COVID-19: Updates from Singapore” session where we will have diplomat and Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, NUS, Professor Kishore Mahbubani, speaking on The Geopolitics of COVID-19. Clickhereto register.
