Risk Takers: Working With Deadly Viruses

So my name is Vicki Jensen, I'm a virologist. A lot of the work that I've done over the past 15 years or so has been on Ebola virus. And I'd like to tell you a little bit about what it's like working in that environment.

So, usually the first question that I get asked when I tell people I work on Ebola is Why the heck would you ever want to do that? And for me it actually started back in college when I was a freshman taking an intro to micro course, I read a book that probably a lot of folks in the room have read, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. And I think if you've read the book, you can understand how you would easily become infatuated with virology and especially with Ebola virus. For me though it actually started a little bit before that. I was always interested in viruses. As a small child, actually not that small, probably 13 years old. I remember learning about HIV. And I remember being in class with a friend of mine and learning about this and the two of us came up with this great idea. We were going to cure HIV. We were going to have patients sit in a chair, hook them up, take all their blood out, boil it up, send it out, get new blood back in and we were going to cure HIV. And that was my first, I guess, risk and failure in science. And being a little bit naive at the time.

But really virology is a big puzzle, okay? And these viruses, Ebola in particular, very, very simple. Only has seven genes. Lot of bang for its genomic buck when you think of all the havoc that it can wreak. It's also extremely beautiful. If you look at the electron micrograph up there, those are actually monkey cells that are infected with the virus. And the string like particles that you see that completely cover the cell, that's Ebola virus. That's budding off of the cell after it's been infected for only about 48 hours. The other virus shown here in yellow and this is colorized, of course, is Lassa Fever virus.

So, most people have heard about Ebola. But there are lot of different viruses that cause a syndrome known as Viral Hemorrhagic Fever. And there's a lot of viruses that are endemic to certain regions, like Lassa Fever which is endemic in West Africa. Then there are viruses like Ebola which pop up from time to time. Of course, we all know now there's an ongoing outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. I think the current counts are up over 17,000 cases, over 6,000 deaths. But as you can see these viruses occur pretty much all over the world. And we even have some in the United States. Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, which a lot of people are familiar with in the Midwest. And with air travel the way it is, you can appreciate how it would be really easy to spread viruses throughout the... throughout the entire world really.

And so, that's how I got interested. And so when we think about viruses we think of it in terms of bio-safety risk. And so if you look at the very bottom we start with bio-safety level one. And these are viruses, bacteria, things that really don't cause disease in healthy individuals. As you go up a level, bio-safety level two, these might be your hospital labs, university labs, things where you're dealing with maybe E. Coli, can cause human disease but really nothing too serious typically. If you go up another level, bio-safety level three, that's when things start getting a little more serious. These are viruses and bacteria where you have higher case fatality rates. You have more personal protective equipment that we wear as laboratorians. So, you may wear a face mask. Or what we call a PAPR, as you see here. But typically at least for the viruses in that category there are some treatments, there may be vaccines.

However when you go to the pinnacle of this pyramid, bio-safety level four, you have the highest case fatality rates, they're all viruses, there are no vaccines and there are no therapies. And there are very few labs in the world that are capable of working with those agents. So what is it like to work in the lab? It's fun sometimes. It's cumbersome all the time. And everything takes about two-to-three times longer than you would think. So we work in positive pressure suits. The one up there is a white one. And basically if you look at the yellow hose, that's an air hose. We hook that up, air gets pumped into our suit. And that's one way that we protect ourselves. So, if we accidentally get a hole in a glove, a hole in a suit, the air is always pushing things out and away from us. The lab itself, is interesting because it is almost like playing Tarzan. If you want to get from one area of the lab to the other, it's not as simple as just walking. You're tethered to these air hoses. So, if you have things to carry, you're having to constantly stop and move. The lab itself is more than just a space we work in.

So a lot of people don't appreciate this, but there's a ton of stuff, mechanical space above us where we have HEPA-filtered air that goes in, lots of back up breathing air, all sorts of stuff like that. Below we have decontamination for all the fluids, all the waste that goes out. So everything that leaves the lab is dead. So what is it like working in there? It's not like the movies. Vaccines and treatments, they're not developed in days, weeks, months, years. We fail a lot. And by that I mean for every therapy that we've discovered we've tested hundreds, thousands more that have failed. Now with the recent Ebola outbreak, we have had a lot more progress. Things are moving more rapidly, which some would argue, I would argue is unfortunate it takes something like that to get things moving so quickly.

So, one of the things we do a lot is mitigate risk. So, even though we have these suits that we work in that's not our primary means of containing the virus. So we actually do all of our work in bio-safety cabinets. So, if we have a spill, it's contained there. The suit is really meant to be as a backup. And so, when we think about failure in science I like to think it's really how you perceive it. My mentor told me when I was getting into this field, “if you're successful ten percent of the time, you're doing really awesome.” And so I think of it if I have an experiment that doesn't work, it's an opportunity, it's an experience we've learned something.

And so, one of my favorite quotes that I always think of when I think of failure and risk is from Thomas Edison. And this is when he was creating the light bulb. And he said he hadn't failed 10,000 times. He hadn't failed even once. He actually succeeded in proving those 10,000 ways would not work. And that when he eliminated all of those ways, then he would find the way that would work. And so, I leave you with that thought. Thanks.