Since 1894, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), China and the world have been repeatedly plagued by infectious disease outbreaks, including the Yersinia pestis pandemic (1894), Spanish flu pandemic (1918), Asian flu pandemic (1957 H1N1), Hong Kong flu pandemic (1968 H3N2), avian flu (1997 H5N1, 2013 H7N9) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (2003) with significant morbidity, mortality, agricultural loss, socioeconomic disruptions and/or even political turmoil.

To combat against these prevalent and/or emerging infectious disease epidemics, we propose the setting up of the CVVT which will bring the expertise of different scientific disciplines from distinguished international, mainland and local institutes for a synergistic research approach to improve our basic understanding of infectious disease pathogenesis. Discoveries or translational technology made at our center for one virus, such as influenza virus, will benefit the research and translational output of other viruses or programs. Our team members will harness and translate these basic scientific understanding into mid- to down- stream research and development for the control of these important public health problems.

This will lead to the production of:

1. a novel platform for the generation of safe and effective vaccines active against various clinically important microbes especially respiratory viruses, with minimal risk of vaccine virus dissemination or neurological complications; and also novel topical or systemic adjuvants for conventional vaccines given by injection;

2. a novel bi-specific neutralizing antibody platform for viral pathogens;

3. broad-spectrum antivirals with different mechanisms of action against host factors;

4. novel antivirals against virus factors: their internal structural proteins and enzymes;

5. a novel human and animal organoid technology platform to isolate previously non-culturable viruses for differentiating the potential of these viruses to jump the interspecies barriers for epidemic preparedness, and for the testing of antivirals.