The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has published a list of the pathogen families that could pose the greatest risk to public health, in an effort to focus preparedness and R&D efforts.
The list of 24 pathogen families is included in a reference tool to help guide R&D investments and looks at global public health threats as well as those most relevant to the UK. It provides information on the pathogen families where more research is needed to boost preparedness against future biosecurity risks - particularly around diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics.
For each viral family there is a rating of high, moderate, or low pandemic and epidemic potential, based on the opinions of scientific experts within UKHSA.
The agency said this rating does not indicate which pathogens it considers most likely to cause the next pandemic, but rather those pathogens requiring increased scientific investment and study. This includes pathogens where there is a need for increased vaccine or diagnostics development, and those which may be exacerbated by a changing climate or antimicrobial resistance, it noted. UKHSA said the tool – due to be updated annually - is not a detailed threat assessment and is not exhaustive. The pathogen families are not ranked.
UKHSA Chief Scientific Officer Isabel Oliver said: “We hope this will help to speed up vaccine and diagnostics development where it is most needed, to ensure we are fully prepared in our fight against potentially deadly pathogens.” Among the pathogen families where UKHSA is keen to see greater scientific strides made are the coronaviridae family, which includes Covid-19; the paramyxoviridae family which includes Nipah virus; and the orthomyxoviridae family which includes avian influenza.
Emma Thomson, director of the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, said the tool is “an important and valuable resource” that will help to guide research efforts. “By highlighting pathogen families of greatest concern to public health, this tool will enable more strategic investment in diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics, focusing attention where it can have the greatest impact. From a scientific perspective, the list is particularly helpful in identifying gaps in our current understanding of high-risk pathogen families and the areas where new research and countermeasure development are most urgently needed,” she said.
Thomson said that while many of the listed families—such as coronaviridae, paramyxoviridae, and orthomyxoviridae—are already recognised as significant threats, but the tool also highlights less well-characterised families where pandemic or epidemic potential remains underexplored.
History has shown that pandemic risks can arise from unexpected sources, she noted.
“There are an estimated 320,000 undiscovered viruses in wildlife that could have spillover potential. Enhanced technologies for virus discovery and characterisation—such as unbiased metagenomic sequencing and improved surveillance—will be essential to ensure that novel pathogens are rapidly identified and assessed for pandemic potential,” she said.
Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh said that of the highest priority pathogens identified by the UKHSA, “no one could argue” with the inclusion of coronaviruses and influenza viruses. “The UKHSA are also right to be concerned about another family of viruses, the Paramyxoviridae. This is a group that includes the measles virus, itself a continuing cause for concern with large outbreaks regularly reported from around the world,” he said.
“There are many potential kinds of novel pandemic threats – so-called Disease X – and the UKHSA report is a timely reminder that we should not put all our eggs in one basket. The possibility of different kinds of threat – different transmission routes, different types of disease, different populations at risk – means that our response needs to be scalable, adaptable and quick,” he said.
However, Robert Read, Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Southampton said that lists like this have been made for many years, and they represent an effort to prioritise infections for advisory and funding purposes, ostensibly to align research funding as closely as possible to public health need. “Unfortunately, pathogens emerge or change constantly, and it is difficult to predict big infectious disease problems coming down the line,” he said. Read said that with a list this long it was tricky to name a significant viral pathogen that has not been included, and he said a prescriptive list like this could misdirect funding towards certain infections - and away from problems that need urgently to be solved.
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