Building a COMPASS to navigate future pandemics

University of Michigan researchers will partner in the recently announced NSF Center for Community Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to Societies (NSF COMPASS). 

Led by Virginia Tech, NSF COMPASS will discover the genetic, molecular, cellular and chemical rules of life that underlie virus-host interactions through community-based research. COMPASS researchers will create predictive models that address how a pathogen may lower host barriers to infect a cell, how it persists in the environment, and how drugs that have already been approved may be utilized to treat infections.  Collaborating institutions include Cornell University, Meharry Medical College and Wake Forest University. 

The COMPASS Center, which will be led by T.M. Murali, Ph.D., associate department head for research in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, is part of an overall $72 million NSF Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention program established to better understand how pathogens and diseases emerge and spread as well as to train the next generation of scientists to carry on the work to stop them. The project was supported by two rounds of funding from the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost that established a Virginia Tech research thrust for pandemic prediction and prevention.

“We are very excited to participate in this large collaborative Center with Virginia Tech,” says Adam Lauring, M.D., Ph.D., Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at U-M Medical School, who is a Co-Principal Investigator for the new NSF Center. The Center will focus on four research thrusts, dubbed Jump, Replicate, Persist, and Empower:

• Jump Thrust- How does a pathogen, like a virus, jump from one species to another? Researchers will use predictive models based on machine learning to find out how changes in a pathogen may enable it to infect new species.
• Replicate Thrust- How does a pathogen replicate inside a host? The research group will develop new ways to create organoids — miniaturized models of organs that mimic their key functions — to grow a new virus, study its life cycle, and test new and existing drugs and therapies on it. 
• Persist Thrust- What are the factors that permit a pathogen to persist in the environment? The goal of the researchers is to develop approaches that can identify the features of a pathogen or the environment that can cause inactivation.
• Empower Thrust- How do we empower the public with the scientific knowledge gained through this work? Faculty and students involved in COMPASS will be trained to better communicate with the public around pandemic science, and the researchers will meet with the public in community dialogues.

“There are thousands of viruses in animals with the potential to spill over into humans and cause a pandemic. As co-lead of the Jump Thrust, I will work with computer scientists to develop AI tools to figure out which of these viruses present the greatest risk. We plan to leverage large language models to interpret the language of viral sequences and understand how viruses are able to cross species barriers.”

Lauring is joined on the U-M team by Krista Wigginton, Ph.D., Professor and Associate Department Chair of Graduate Programs in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the U-M College of Engineering. 

“I will work with the Persist thrust to develop tools for predicting the persistence of viruses in the environment based on virus characteristics and environmental conditions," said Wigginton.

One of the first events that the COMPASS Center will organize is a National Dialogue on the Ethics of Pandemic Research in Washington D.C. in November. The goal of the event is to incorporate community voices and feedback into research in pandemic science. Researchers and community-based partners will collaboratively identify key ethical questions that arise in pandemic science.

The center will collaborate on diverse research projects with industry, federal agencies, and international organizations. Murali expects these efforts to result in a robust public-private ecosystem to provide solutions to diverse problems in pandemic science.