Competition Fueling The Researchers Studying Coronavirus At University Of Pittsburgh
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- When doing science research, even the world's best and brightest minds don't always have the answers.
"We don't know how best to approach a problem, which is new not just to Pittsburgh, not just Pennsylvania, not just the U.S., not just the U.S. and Europe, but the actual whole world," says Dr. Paul Duprex, Ph.D. "It's very important -- in fact, it is behoven on us that we should work together."
Duprex heads a team of virologists at the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh. That group has worked with many deadly viruses -- from polio to chikungunya to Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and bird flu. Years of experience means they hit the ground running on COVID-19.
There were parts of switching their focus to a new virus that was pretty straight-forward.
Duprex calls it "simple in the sense of it's easy because this what virologists do all time. So it's plug and play for us. We do what we've done for other viruses for the coronavirus, and we end up being able to work with it."
The C-V-R on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh is one of about a dozen biocontainment labs working with coronavirus in the United States. There is competition to find the answer first.
"Competition drives great creativity. It drives innovation," asserts Duprex. The native of Northern Ireland says, "It makes people think outside the box. But collaboration is also super important. And collaboration is more important than ever in an outbreak situation like we have with COVID-19."
Funding for basic science has been greatly reduced over the years. To get grant money, labs must produce results and publish their findings. Without the work of others in the scientific community, that drive to publish, that drive to finish first, is meaningless.
There is a sense you cannot do science alone. Yet it is impossible for scientists not to be competitive.
"It's intrinsic and the way we are, but that doesn't mean that you can't make scientists collaborative. And that doesn't mean that the best science doesn't happen in collaborations where one plus one equals five."
While collaboration sounds good, scientists walk a fine line.
Do you think legendary Pitt researcher Jonas Salk would be known worldwide if he wasn't first in discovering a polio vaccine in 1953?
Duprex knows it is unlikely.
"We have to be careful to be realistic, but we also have to be careful to be competitive. Because if we're competitive, we drive, and if we have the passion to make the work work, then we get further down the line."
Ultimately, it is those answers which may lead to findings with worldwide implications.