The Washington Post - 19.03.2020

THURSDAy, MARCH 19 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ re A

the coronavirus outbreak

BY AMY GOLDSTEIN

A senior scientist at a govern-
ment biomedical research labora-
tory has been thwarted in his
efforts to conduct experiments on
possible treatments for the new
coronavirus because of the
Trump administration’s restric-
tions on research with human
fetal tissue.
The scientist, Kim Hasenkrug,
an immunologist at the National
Institutes of Health’s Rocky
Mountain Laboratories in Mon-
tana, has been appealing for near-
ly a month to top NIH officials,
arguing that the pandemic war-
rants an exemption to a ban
imposed last year prohibiting
government researchers from us-
ing tissue from abortions in their
work.
According to several research-
ers familiar with the situation,
some of whom spoke on the
condition of anonymity about the
sensitive internal dispute, such
experiments could be particular-
ly fruitful. Just months ago, be-
fore the new coronavirus began
to infect people around the
world, other U.S. scientists made
two highly relevant discoveries.
They found that specialized mice
could be transplanted with hu-
man fetal tissue that develops
into lungs — the part of the body
the new coronavirus invades.
These “humanized mice,” they
also found, could then be infected
with coronaviruses — to which
ordinary mice are not susceptible
— closely related to the one that
causes the new disease, covid-19.
Outside researchers said the
scientists who created those mice
have offered to give them to the
Rocky Mountain Lab, which has
access to the new virus that
causes covid-19, so the mice could
be infected with the source of the
pandemic and experiments could
be run on potential treatments.
Candidates include an existing
drug known to boost patients’

immune systems in other circum-

stances, as well as blood serum

from patients recovering from

covid-19.

“Kim Hasenkrug is one of the

world experts in immune re-

sponses to persistent viral infec-

tion, including HIV and a whole

bunch of other viruses,” said Ir-

ving Weissman, a leading stem

cell researcher at Stanford Uni-

versity. In addition, the Montana

NIH site has a biosafety lab

equipped with high-level protec-

tions for experiments with dan-

gerous microbes.

“It isn’t c lear if this added layer

of urgent investigations will find

more effective” treatments for

people infected in the pandemic

than other approaches being

tr ied, Weissman said, “but it’s

stupid not to try.”

No therapies or vaccines for

the new coronavirus exist yet.

The inability of the Montana

lab, part of NIH’s National Insti-

tute of Allergy and Infectious

Diseases, to pursue these experi-

ments on the coronavirus is the

latest example of disruptions to

scientists’ work caused by the

administration’s restrictions on

research involving fetal tissue.

“When I hear the vice presi-

dent saying [they’re] doing every-

thing they can to find vaccines

[and treatments], I know that is

not true,” said one scientist famil-

iar with the situation, referring to

Vice President Pence’s daily news

briefings of the White House’s

coronavirus task force. “A nything

we do at this point could save

hundreds of thousands of lives. If

you wait, it’s too late.”

Caitlin Oakley, a spokeswoman

for the Department of Health and

Human Services, which includes

NIH, said, “no decision has been

made” about Rocky Mountain’s

request. She added that the ad-

ministration’s “bold, decisive ac-

tions” t o respond to the pandemic

include “kick-starting the devel-

opment of vaccines and thera-

peutics through every possible

avenue.”

Hasenkrug has been forbidden

by federal officials to talk publicly

since the administration began to

reconsider fetal tissue funding

rules in the fall of 2018 at the

prodding of social conservatives

who oppose abortion and are part

of President Trump’s political

base.

The fetal tissue is donated by

women undergoing elective abor-

tions, and critics say that it is

unethical to use the material and

that taxpayer money should not

be used for research that relies on

abortion.

“Promoting the dignity of hu-

man life from conception to natu-

ral death is one of the very top

priorities of President Trump’s

administration,” HHS said in an-

nouncing its revised policy late

last spring.

Under the policy Trump an-

nounced then, university re-

searchers or other outside scien-

tists face new restrictions on

federal funding of such work. If

an NIH grant proposal is ap-

proved through the normal scien-

tific review process, it must then

be evaluated by a new ethics

advisory board that was an-

nounced months ago but does not

yet exist. This winter, NIH offi-

cials officially invited nomina-

tions to the panel for the current

year, but its members have not yet

been determined, and no date has

been set for it to convene.

The restrictions for govern-

ment researchers such as Hasen-

krug — known as NIH’s intramu-

ral scientists — are more severe.

Those scientists have been

banned from pursuing studies

that involve fetal tissue. Hasenk-

rug was at the time of the ban

collaborating on humanized

mouse research aimed at a possi-

ble cure for HIV.

According to the scientists fa-

miliar with the events, a research-

er at the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill last

month offered to send to Rocky

Mountain nearly three dozen

mice implanted with the human

lung tissue that he and colleagues

had recently shown could be in-

fected with coronaviruses. There

are enough of them for experi-

ments with three or four poten-

tial treatments, the scientists

said.

The offer came six months

after the UNC scientists pub-

lished their findings in the jour-

nal Nature Biotechnology about

having succeeded in implanting

human fetal lung tissue into mice

with their own immune systems

removed. The mice then grew

human lung structures and were

able to be infected with coronavi-

ruses and other viruses to which

mice ordinarily are not suscepti-

ble.

A senior UNC scientist, who

has been cautioned by the univer-

sity not to speak publicly about

the research, according to other

scientists familiar with the situa-

tion, did not respond to requests

for comment.

On Feb. 19, two people said,

Hasenkrug wrote to a senior NIH

official, asking for permission to

use those mice and run experi-

ments related to covid-19. He

eventually was told that his re-

quest had been passed on to

senior HHS officials.

Since then, he has written re-

peatedly to NIH, laying out in

greater detail the experiments he

wants to undertake and why sev-

eral alternatives to the fetal tis-

sue-implanted mice would not be

as useful. In one appeal to NIH,

Hasenkrug wrote that the mice

he was offered are more than a

year old and have a relatively

short time remaining to live, so

they should be used quickly, ac-

cording to Kerry Lavender, a Ca-

nadian researcher familiar with

the correspondence.

Hasenkrug has not received an

answer as to whether the admin-

istration will allow him to pro-

ceed, scientists familiar with his

request said.

A person familiar with where

things stand, speaking on the

condition of anonymity about the

internal dynamic, said the re-

quests had been forwarded about

two weeks ago to the White

House’s Domestic Policy Council

and that HHS and NIH were

waiting for a decision there.

Late last week, Lavender, a

former postdoctoral trainee at

Rocky Mountain who helped de-

velop a technique to implant

mice with fetal tissue, heard from

Hasenkrug, her mentor, asking

whether she might undertake the

coronavirus research that he was

not allowed to do.

Lavender, an assistant profes-

sor at the University of Saskatch-

ewan, said in an interview that

she moved back to her native

Canada less than two years ago

because she wanted to continue

pursuing fetal tissue studies and

could see that the Trump admin-

istration was hostile to such re-

search.

She said she is scrambling to

try to carry out the experiments

but is uncertain whether “we can

pull it off.... I’m a new investiga-

tor with only so much funding,”

she said, adding that she does not

have immediate access to the

kind of biohazard containment

facility needed to do the work

safely.

“If we were able to do this

within the NIH, we would be able

to do this much more quickly,”

Lavender said. “Because the NIH

budget all comes through the

government, they can easily col-

laborate and fund what they are

doing.... I t’s much harder when

we’re all separate entities to try to

arrange the funding.”

According to one of the scien-

tists, an experiment would take

perhaps a week or 10 days to show

whether a potential treatment

was effective in the mice. Any

promising therapy would then

require testing in humans and

approval by the U.S. Food and

Drug Administration.

Stanford’s Weissman said one

potential therapy that should be

tried is a drug, already FDA-ap-

proved, that he developed initial-

ly for cancers that he and Hasenk-

rug more recently have found to

be effective in boosting immune

response in mice. People with

weakened immune systems are

particularly vulnerable to severe

illness or death from covid-19.

“Will it work? We don’t know

that,” Weissman said. But, he

said, “this is a way to bring more

minds and more hands” to the

search for a treatment for the new

pandemic.

[email protected]

Federal ban on fetal-tissue research hampers e≠orts to find virus treatments

PHIlIP CHeung For THe WAsHIngTon PosT

Mice can be transplanted with human fetal tissue that develops into

lungs, researchers found, and infected with coronaviruses.

A government scientist

wants permission to use

‘humanized mice’

“It isn’t clear if this added layer of urgent

investigations will find more effective” treatments

for people infected with the novel coronavirus,

“but it’s stupid not to try.”

Irving Weissman, stem-cell researcher at stanford university

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