New research from the University of Missouri School of Medicine and the NextGen Center for Influenza and Emerging Infectious Diseases reveals how during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, disease monitoring efforts focused more on cities and urban centers, compared to rural areas. In these blind spots, though, variants of the virus were quietly evolving.

Henry Wan, PhD, Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Veterinary Pathobiology, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was recently elected to the 2024 College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Two Mizzou Engineering faculty members - Xiaohua Liu and Henry Wan - have been elected to the 2024 College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Imagine investigators navigating city streets, collecting clues on a hidden health threat from the city’s furry inhabitants. Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) living in New York City are helping to uncover the secrets of zoonotic diseases – illnesses that move between animals and humans.

MAIVeSS: streamlined selection of antigenically matched, high-yield viruses for seasonal influenza vaccine production.

Flu vaccines could be getting a booster of their own with the help of machine learning.

Cynthia Tang and Brian Thomas, student scientists at the University of Missouri’s Bond Life Sciences Center, both recently received F30 fellowships from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The University of Missouri Board of Curators has recognized Xiu-Feng “Henry” Wan, PhD as a Curators' Distinguished Professor.

Xiu-Feng “Henry” Wan has been named a Curators’ Distinguished Professor, the highest honor bestowed by the University of Missouri, for his ground-breaking studies of Influenza A and other pathogenic viruses used to develop vaccines and understand how viruses emerge and spread.

Research skills aren’t built in a day, but Cynthia Tang’s diligence brought those skills to bear as she recently received a National Institutes of Health fellowship to further her budding career in science.

The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service released national research from its first year of studies and sampling of white-tailed deer for active infection of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Several national news outlets covered our study of rats in New York City that were found to carry the COVID virus.

The Mizzou 18 honorees include six students from the MU School of Medicine and two staff members, the most of any school or college this year..

Cynthia Tang, graduate student in Systems BioLab, was one of those chosen to recieve the Mizzou 18 Award

This week, the Mizzou Alumni Association and Alumni Association Student Board named the 2023 Mizzou 18 Award and Mizzou ’39 Award recipients.

Cynthia Tang, graduate student in Systems BioLab, was one of those chosen to recieve the Mizzou 18 Award

Facing an outbreak that’s unusually deadly for wild birds and spreading to more mammals, scientists worry about when, or if, it will end.

While inoculations could target high-risk animals such as free-range chickens that interact with wild birds, incomplete measures also risk speeding the rise of new variants, says University of Missouri virologist Henry Wan.

Cynthia Tang, an MD/PhD student at the MU School of Medicine presents her research at the 2023 American Physician Scientist Association Regional Meeting on Friday, Feb. 17, 2023.

...the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) named five University of Missouri professors as 2022 Fellows for their distinguished efforts in advancing various fields of science.

Wan is being recognized for his “distinguished contributions to the fields of virology, systems biology, and engineering, particularly for studies of highly pathogenic influenza with a focus on transmission, ecology, diversity and vaccine development.”

Wan ultimately hopes the work can help prevent another worldwide pandemic.

University of Missouri Professor Xiu-Feng “Henry” Wan recently received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate how SARS-CoV-2 impacts various species of animals and whether those animals might send new variants of the virus back to us.

Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine have discovered a high prevalence of COVID-19 co-infections in central Missouri during the 2021-2022 flu season, with a monthly co-infection rate as high as 48% among individuals with COVID-19.

With the opening of the NextGen Center for Influenza and Emerging Infectious Diseases, MU researcher Henry Wan is working toward a deeper understanding of the flu.

Geese will soon fill the skies as they migrate south in V-formation as the weather gets colder and the leaves start changing color. For a month or so, migrating birds take over, crossing roads, sitting in parks and stopping to eat leftover seeds in farm fields or swim in ponds as they travel south for the winter.

What people may not realize is that some of these birds are carrying something harmful, yet invisible to the naked eye. That something is influenza A viruses that can transmit from birds to pigs and then to humans.

Professor Henry Wan has studied flu viruses for years, and he can assure you, coronavirus is not the same. It’s trickier. Less predictable And for many, deadlier.But there are insights scientists can glean from decades of research around the transmission of the flu. That’s why a team of Mizzou researchers is turning its collective attention to COVID-19.

The group recently received National Science Foundation RAPID funding to analyze how the Spanish Flu of 1918 impacted Missouri and determine how those transmission patterns might apply to today’s pandemic. Lisa Sattenspiel, chair of anthropology in MU’s College of Arts & Science, is the project’s principal investigator. Carolyn Orbann, an associate teaching professor of health science in the School of Health Professions, is a co-principal investigator.

Virologist Dr. Henry Wan, anthropologist Dr. Lisa Sattenspiel, and historian Dr. Kristy Wilson-Bowers meet on this episode of the Show-Me Futures Podcast Series to discuss the research impacts of COVID-19 at the University of Missouri. Topics include the active COVID-19 research, pandemic modeling, and science communication. Podcast hosted by Miki Hodel and edited by Hope Davis.

For more than 40 years, Lisa Sattenspiel has been an anthropologist and infectious disease expert. Twenty-five years ago, she started studying the 1918 Spanish flu. Today, she is bringing a career’s worth of experience to helping understand how COVID-19 might play out in Missouri.

Sattenspiel, a professor and chair of MU’s Department of Anthropology, is the principal investigator of an interdisciplinary team looking at how and why the Spanish flu affected each Missouri county differently.

With shelter in place orders being extended throughout the country and events being canceled, COVID-19 is a pressing issue, and influenza researchers at MU have been pivoting recently to begin studying the virus.

Henry Wan, an influenza researcher and Bond LSC principal investigator, is planning on expanding his work to start looking at COVID-19 along with a team of epidemiologists, anthropologists, engineers, and more at MU. While influenza and COVID-19 are not the same virus, both are infectious respiratory illnesses transmitted through similar ways.

It was an entirely new process for Henry (XiuFeng) Wan as he spent part of last weekend wooing potential graduate students at the 11th annual Graduate Life Sciences Joint Recruitment Weekend at the Bond Life Sciences Center.

As a relatively new faculty member, Wan took his first stab at recruiting in a way he’s never had to before. Previously having worked for years at Mississippi State University, he has never had to actively recruit students for his lab before but sees it as an exciting challenge.

It’s common knowledge that all Ph.D. candidates must complete research in preparation for a dissertation, but what happens when one’s faculty mentor moves to a different school before completion?

Kaitlyn Waters found herself in that situation as she was preparing for the final year of her Ph.D. program. Waters, a current veterinary medical sciences Ph.D. candidate at Mississippi State University (MSU), is finishing her research in the Bond Life Sciences Center with primary investigator Henry Wan. Wan came to Mizzou last summer from MSU as a joint professor in the School of Medicine, the departments of Veterinary Pathobiology, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Karen Segovia wanted to work with animals the moment her childhood dog fell sick. With few veterinarians near the rural town in Perú where she grew up, she felt powerless to help, and that inspired her to eventually go to veterinary school.

But it was her preparation for her dissertation to meet the degree requirements at San Marcos National University veterinary school that refined Segovia’s focus on something smaller. Already interested in virology, her research narrowed in viruses and avian flu. A connection with a colleague led her to wild bird reservoirs to study samples for various avian viruses.

Every year we all tend to pay a visit to the doctor to get ahead of cold and flu season. Nothing could be worse than being in the midst of a hectic time at work or school and being out of commission. Many don’t think twice about the annual flu shot, it just becomes a part of their autumnal routine. But for Henry Wan, a new primary investigator in the Bond Life Sciences Center, a significant portion of his life revolves around understanding how flu viruses get transmitted from animals to humans and vice versa as well as tracking down more effective influenza vaccination strains.