For my talk, I will first report the researches that we have been conducting on bat-borne viruses in the Philippines which started in 2007. Our research group, composed of virologists and bat ecologists from the University of the Philippines Los Banos and several Japanese universities, sampled bats from 12 provinces and islands all over the country. We found serological and sequence-based evidence for the presence of eight virus groups belonging to families known to be zoonotic and detrimental to human health. These virus groups include Filoviridae (Reston Ebolavirus), Gammaherpes, Coronavirus (alpha- and beta-), Hantavirus, Pteropine orthoreovirus, Flaviridae (Dengue Virus), Henipavirus, and Poxvirus. These viruses were uncovered from 11 bat species, all of which are widespread across the Philippines and for some bat species, inhabiting human-associated habitats (e.g. buildings, orchards, villages), As such, this can pose a ground-zero event for possible spill-over of potentially zoonotic and harmful pathogens to humans. For the second part of my talk, I will be appealing to PSBMB members to re-channel some of their research efforts and look into many exciting yet pressing fields of bat-borne virology studies in tandem with bat ecologists and wildlife biologists. For this, I present four main research topics, following a framework of the Bat/One Health Research Network (BOHRN), a global-scale multi-disciplinary consortium that aims to characterize the threat of bat pathogens under the One Health research approach. These are (1) Molecular detection and distribution of viruses among Philippine bat species; (2) Pathogen surveillance and diagnostic capacity; (3) Virus ecology/dynamics in bats, domesticated animals, and wildlife interface; and (4) Risk characterization and forecasting in human-bat interaction vis-a-vis virus spill-over dynamics. In taking on the aforementioned topics, the unique expertise of molecular biologists and biochemist members of PSBMB will prove to be pivotal in mitigating the threat of emerging zoonotic infectious diseases in the Philippines.
ISSN 2719-1990 (Print)
Philippine E-Journals
