Zika virus research underway at New Mexico State University

th first thought and its impact on the u-s could be greater than predicted. that makes work on the disease in the u-s even more important. professors at n-m- s-u have been researching the virus for years … and just this week received a multi- million dollar grant to continue that work. abc-7’s darren hunt has the story: “i’ve been working on the virus for almost a decade now to try to understand its dynamics.” meet dr. kathryn hanley from n-m-s-u’s biology department … one of the leading research bases in the country for mosquito bourne illnesses – including zika. “zika is like donald trump, i you had asked a politician about or political analyst about donald trump in 2014 they would have said donald who and most people would say zika what?” bu with more than 300 confirmed cases in the u-s, that’s changed. “now that the virus has moved into the americas, not only may it infect humans, but it also may start infecting non human animals, that will be a huge problem, because if it does that and it establishes a non-human animal cycle, we’ll never be rid of it.” “here at nmsu’s molecular vecto physiology lab they are doing very important work, developing compounds to kill mosquitos … which by the way are the deadliest animal in the world, killing more people than any other.” “approximately a million people die of mosquito bourne diseases.” n-m- s-u’ dr. immo hansen is also reseaching ways to control the virus. “these mosquitos develo resistance against insecticides over the generations and that becomes a big problem … so we are working on novel methods to fight mosquito bourne diseases … to kill mosquitos.” “while we’re working very har to get new methods to control the mosquitos, our current methods are not adequate, and so we are going to be at a little bit of a loss to control zika when it moves into the united states.” and that’s why the research being done at n-m-s-u is so important. darren hunt … “there’s only a handful o people that worked on zika virus before 2015.” abc- 7. the multi-million dollar zika grant n-m-s-u landed this week is from the national institute of health … dr. hanley said the idea is to promote international cooperation between experts in the u-s and researchers in the countries where the disease is having its biggest impact. police in odessa have