Should bioterrorists exploit either of two newly emerging viruses as weapons of mass destruction, scientists in New York said on Thursday, they have discovered a powerful protein fragment that may effectively thwart lethal infections. The idea is to develop the infinitesimal fragment into a drug, said Anne Moscona and Matteo Porotto, who are on the trail of the Hendra and Nipah viruses, two deadly pathogens that are relatively new to science. Hendra was first isolated in 1994, Nipah in 1999.

Global public health experts have sounded the alarm about both pathogens, which are endemic in fruit bats but cause no disease in them. Both viruses have jumped the species barrier to cause diseases in domestic animals and humans. Experts at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have added them to the Biodefense Research Agenda’s list of viruses that might be exploited into biological weapons.

“There have been so many viruses emerging in the last decade or two,’’ said Moscona, a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan. Hendra and Nipah can cause encephalitis, she said. “The reason both of these viruses are on the bioterrorism list is because they are so lethal,’’ added Moscona, who is also an attending pediatrician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/ Weill Cornell Medical Center.

In the current issue of Virology, Moscona and Porotto documented their work on a tiny peptide, a snippet of a protein, which they serendipitously found during studies of the unrelated parainfluenza virus, which has a devastating impact on children worldwide. Parainfluenza virus possesses this fragment, which—surprisingly—inhibits infection with Hendra and very likely Nipah as well, the scientists said.

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