An Ohio State virologist received $3 million to assist in her studies of SARS.

Linda Saif conducts her research in the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center’s Food Animal Health Research Program in Wooster.

“Linda Saif has been working with the SARS issue since it came about two years ago,” said Mauricio Espinoza, spokesman for the center.

Before SARS hit, coronaviruses like the one that causes SARS were most often thought of as agents of animal diseases.

“There were some coronaviruses that caused human disease, but they usually just caused the common cold,” Espinoza said. “Scientists never bothered to study those coronaviruses because they did not represent a big problem in human health.”

Once SARS made headlines, scientists such as Saif found themselves to be the only ones with any information.

“When SARS came about, that information that researchers like her had became very relevant for science – for disease control and prevention,” Espinoza said. “All of the sudden she was being featured in international news. All the experts were inviting her to share her knowledge and share also the virus materials she had in her lab.”

According to an Oct. 13 statement, Saif was awarded two separate amounts of funding. The first was in the form of a four-year, $2,057,788 grant from the National Institutes of Health to create a SARS model. She will by joined on this by a researcher with the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Belgium’s Ghent University.

“In addition, Linda Saif and FAHRP Chair, Mo Saif have landed a $1 million contract with NIH and the American Type Culture Collection to produce livestock-and poultry-coronavirus materials for distribution to the World Health Organization and its collaborating labs around the world,” the statement said.

Saif is conducting her research on pigs. In the statement, Saif said, “The anatomy, physiology and immune system of the pig respiratory tract closely resembles that of man, providing a unique animal model for the study of viral respiratory disease in humans.”

Only two labs in the world study animal coronaviruses. Saif’s lab is a member of the WHO International SARS Reference and Verification Laboratory Network.