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A peer-reviewed study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and published in 2019 says researchers intentionally mutated hantavirus glycoproteins and used serial passage to create what the study itself called “highly infectious” recombinant viral systems.
The revelation comes amid an alleged hantavirus outbreak linked to the cruise ship MV Hondius, which departed Argentina in April 2026.
The resurfaced gain-of-function work was funded under a multi-million-dollar NIH/NIAID grantAI132633at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
NIHRePORTER recordsshow the project began in 2017 and remained active during the 2018 experiments that produced the infectivity-enhancing mutations described in the paper.
The study, published inmBio, states researchers started with wild-type Hantaan virus (HTNV) glycoproteins that were said to produce only poor rescue and replication in a recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) system.
One of the paper’s lead authors,Dr. Kartik Chandran, now also serves as the project lead of NIAID’s active $70 millionPROVIDENThantavirus pandemic-preparedness program, which had just completed unprecedented Andes hantavirus mapping and vaccine-platform engineering before the 2026 outbreak emerged.
According to the paper: “Multiplication and spread of the early passage rVSV bearing HTNV Gn/Gc were poor but improved dramatically following three serial passages in Vero cells.”
The paper states the serial passage experiments produced two mutations:
According to the study: “This gain in viral fitness was associated with the acquisition of two point mutations.”
Source: modernity
