Influenza: Mastering a Global Threat

A global leader

For almost five decades, St. Jude has been a global leader in influenza research. The study of diseases such as flu is critical to cancer patients because the treatments they endure diminish their immune systems and put them at risk for infections.

“The question often asked of me is, ‘Why are you working with influenza in a cancer institute?’” says virologist Robert Webster, PhD, who holds the hospital’s Rose Marie Thomas Chair in Infectious Diseases. “It’s the infectious diseases—the simple, everyday diseases like measles and influenza—that pose serious risks to our children. Studying influenza is a very important component of St. Jude.”

Flu infections remain a leading cause of illness and death worldwide. During an average U.S. flu season, the virus is linked to approximately 36,000 deaths and 114,000 hospitalizations. The highly contagious disease poses a serious risk to the extremely old and young, as well as to cancer patients and others with compromised immune systems.

The WHO group meets to determine recommendations twice a year—February and September—as it could take up to eight months to produce flu vaccines. Along with looking at the most recent vaccine’s effectiveness, the experts assess flu activity in particularly virulent flu viruses, discuss surveillance and response systems, and “create antigenic and genetic characteristics of current flu strains to develop candidate vaccine strains for flu viruses,” Webby says.

Webster is internationally recognized as an expert in understanding, tracking and combating flu and advancing knowledge of how new flu strains evolve.

“When I started at St. Jude in 1968, we had no idea where these pandemics of influenza came from,” he says. “We started with the WHO studying wild birds, and over the years established firmly that the source of all influenza A viruses in the world comes from the aquatic birds.”

As a result of the initial studies, the WHO approached St. Jude to become a collaborating center in 1975. “We are particularly interested in understanding how some avian flu viruses jump from infecting birds to infecting humans and other mammals while others do not,” Webster says.

St. Jude is also one of five U.S. research institutions designated as a Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. The collaboration unites basic and clinical researchers to advance understanding and response to flu, especially pandemic flu strains that pose a global health threat. At St. Jude, the federal funds help support an international flu surveillance network focused on wild birds and domestic animals.