Joint research efforts to fight the next epidemic.
Interview*: Angelika Jacobs
Emma Hodcroft is investigating how our coexistence with viruses changes both us and the pathogens. In terms of diseases such as bird flu and Ebola, she is concerned about the USA and the slashing of science and development aid under the current administration.
UNI NOVA: Emma Hodcroft, the journal Nature named you as one of three people who will shape science in 2025. What are your plans for this year?
Emma Hodcroft: No pressure, right? (She laughs.) My plans are actually the same as they were before the Nature article. After the pandemic and the intense focus on SARS-CoV-2, I went back to my original field of enterovirus research — and I’m delighted, because I now have a research group of my own in order to test new ideas and hypotheses.
Can you give us an example of enteroviruses?
For example, they include the rhinoviruses, the pathogens responsible for the common cold. They’re annoying but harmless. Polioviruses are far more dangerous, on the other hand. In between those extremes, however, there are many other viruses that we know much less about.
Which viruses are they?
One example that I’m particularly interested in is enterovirus D68, which has been circulating in the population for a long time. Most of us have antibodies against the virus, which normally manifests as a mild respiratory infection in children, and a relatively large number of cases were identified in children in 2015 and 2016. In very rare cases, the virus has also caused paralysis. Why does it have such wide-ranging effects? How much has to do with the virus itself and how much has to do with the immune system? And, more generally, how does our long-term coexistence with such viruses influence virus evolution? These are some of the questions I’m interested in.
The viral evolution of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 could be observed on the Nextstrain platform, which you helped to develop. In 2024, you worked with other researchers to set up another platform by the name of Pathoplexus. What’s the difference?
Nextstrain is a website where we show the evolution of viral variants in the form of family trees. At the same time, however, it’s also an analysis tool. You can download it and use it on your own viral sequencing data. Pathoplexus, on the other hand, is a database. It’s about storing and sharing viral sequencing data.
Nature has reported that many researchers are excited about the further development of Pathoplexus. What’s so special about it?
With our platform, we’ve found a solution to a dilemma. Namely, researchers are reluctant to share data before they’ve published their own analyses. Publications are the most important currency in science, but they take time. In an outbreak of a viral disease, however, it’s vital that researchers around the world have access to this data as quickly as possible. On Pathoplexus, scientists can protect their viral data for a maximum of one year. Other research groups can immediately access the data and work with it, but they can’t use the data as a basis to publish articles of their own until after the protection ends. In the case of the latest Ebola outbreak in Uganda, for example, this option meant that researchers uploaded data to our platform very quickly.
How does this benefit the general public?
In an outbreak, rapid access to data of this kind can help researchers identify the virus quickly and recognize problematic mutations. This information is vital so that authorities can take appropriate action in good time in order to protect the population.
You mentioned the latest Ebola outbreak in Uganda. Bird flu and mpox are also frequently in the headlines. What developments in the virus world are you particularly concerned about?
We need to be careful here. We don’t know where the next major outbreak will come from. Before the pandemic, numerous experts issued warnings about coronaviruses, but many governments focused their emergency planning on flu outbreaks. That shows that if we think we know which virus will cause the next pandemic, we fail to prepare for a pandemic caused by other pathogens that we perhaps know less about.
Are we better prepared for a pandemic now than we were in 2019?
In some respects, yes. At the start of 2020, it was inconceivable that an early lockdown could cause less economic harm than a pandemic. All governments therefore waited too long to act. We now know that the economic damage due to a pandemic is far, far greater. In the future, governments will perhaps be more willing to accept a certain amount of economic damage in order to prevent an even worse outcome. On the other hand, the lockdown was a difficult time for all of us. Children and young people continue to suffer the consequences, and many people experienced a decline in their mental health and financial circumstances. These impacts are more present in people’s minds than the absolutely devastating consequences of not taking action. How will this shape decision-making if we spot the beginnings of a new pandemic? No one wants to go back to lockdowns.
In the USA, serious cases of bird flu are repeatedly making the headlines. At the same time, the U.S. President Donald Trump has laid off employees at key public health authorities and halted research projects. He also featured in the aforementioned Nature list of people who will shape science in 2025. Do you think that’s correct?
He’s changing the research landscape, but in a destructive way. To give just one example, organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — both key institutions for researching and monitoring infectious diseases — can no longer attend international scientific conferences, not even by Zoom. It’s absolutely the worst time to hinder the global exchange of information on bird flu and other threats to public health.
Can the effects of the Trump administration on research also be felt in Switzerland and Europe?
Yes, because there are many joint research projects that are cofinanced by the USA and the EU. If funding from the USA is halted from one day to the next, it’s not easy to fill the gap. There’s a risk that a range of studies will be discontinued because bills can no longer be paid. Everything costs money, from temperature regulation and the gas mixer for cell cultures, to food, heat and care of laboratory animals. You can’t just say we’ll look at the funding again in a couple of weeks. If there’s no money, researchers are forced to abandon experiments that have sometimes taken several years of preparation.
And what about its effects beyond the world of laboratory research?
The quasi-dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development has devastating consequences for people who depend on the programs it funds, and many of the affected countries are precisely those where we’re seeing outbreaks of Ebola, for example. Cutting off the money supply and therefore the monitoring of infectious diseases is a big mistake.
These sound like dangerous developments. There are pockets of resistance, but why is there not more protest in the USA?
Many researchers and federal employees face a dilemma: Should they protest and risk being the next to be laid off? Or should they quietly try to salvage what they can? And when it comes to the American public, many people believe the narrative that Trump is putting an end to the squandering of public funds. What they don’t realize is how strict the controls are on research spending. Anyone who receives research funding has to justify every last dollar and cent. Of course, you can scrutinize public authorities and make changes where necessary — but no audit would go about things in the way that the Trump administration is doing. You don’t simply lay off all your experienced health professionals, get rid of all the expertise and start again from scratch. That’s not improving efficiency; it’s purely destructive.
Is there a glimmer of hope?
Honestly, I can’t see one right now. Maybe one day we’ll be able to look back and say: That was the turning point that caused Europe to come together and usher in a new era of development aid and research collaboration. But even that hope leaves a bitter aftertaste — is this much destruction really necessary? Shouldn’t it also be possible without this much suffering and without so many people in Africa losing their lives? Without wiping out so many jobs and so much expertise?
As well as you and Donald Trump, the Nature list of “Ones to watch in 2025” also includes the new CERN director, Mark Thomson. Both CERN and Pathoplexus are built on international collaboration. Are they the antithesis of what’s happening in the USA?
I hope so! CERN is a great example: We can achieve so much as an international community that would be very difficult or impossible for individual countries alone. The technological innovations developed at CERN have become part of our everyday lives. Together, we can achieve amazing things — and that also applies to research into public health. Except that it’s not just about technical ways of making our everyday lives easier, but ultimately about protecting ourselves from deadly diseases.
*This interview was conducted end of March 2025.
More articles in this issue of UNI NOVA (May 2025).