With Sir John Skehel, they organized the first open conference on the subject - H5N1 research: biosafety, biosecurity and bioethics - at the Royal Society on April 3-4, 2012.
It was organized by The Foundation for Vaccine Research, The Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Fondation Mérieux, the American Society for Microbiology, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Institut Pasteur and the Society for General Microbiology.
This meeting was available on the web for 2 years following the conference and can still be viewed at http://royalsociety.org/events/2012/viruses/
Since that meeting he has taken a position on the subject and written about it:
An avian H7N1 gain-of-function experiment of great concern
Wain-Hobson S
MBio. 2014 Oct 14;5(5). pii: e01882-14. doi: 10.1128/mBio.01882-14.
The irrationality of GOF avian influenza virus research
Wain-Hobson S
Front Public Health. 2014 Jul 16;2:77. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2014.00077. eCollection 2014.
Pandemic influenza viruses: Time to recognize our inability to predict the unpredictable and stop dangerous gain-of-function experiments.
Wain-Hobson S
EMBO Mol Med 5, 1637-1641 2013
Gain of function: unknown risks
Rey F, Schwartz O, Wain-Hobson S
Science. 2013 Oct 18;342(6156):311. doi: 10.1126/science.342.6156.311-a.url
H5N1 viral-engineering dangers will not go away
Wain-Hobson S
Nature. 2013 Mar 28;495(7442):411. doi: 10.1038/495411a.
He has no grant support for this work.
Simon Wain-Hobson obtained his DPhil in biophysics from the University of Oxford.
Following a post-doc at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, he moved to Paris where he switched to human virology, working notably on the AIDS virus HIV, from the earliest hour.
Being the first to publish its genetic map, his group went on to show that it evolved from a chimpanzee virus. They highlighted with exquisite precision the phenomenal genetic variation and rapid evolution of HIV.
After more than 25 years work on the molecular genetics of AIDS virus his group found a remarkable connection that allowed them to move into cancer research - cancer genomes too harbor phenomenal numbers of mutations and rearrangements. The Pasteur group showed that the human genome encodes a DNA mutator enzyme, APOBEC3A, which can mutate chromosomal DNA. It is now accepted that this enzyme is an endogenous mutagen on a par with ultraviolet light and cigarette smoke.
Simon Wain-Hobson is Professor at the Institut Pasteur and has published more than 200 papers. A member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, Academia Europaea, he is Director of the French papillomavirus reference laboratory. He won the André Lwoff prize in 1996 and Athena prize from the French Academy of Sciences in 2007 and is Officier de la Légion d’Honneur. He is Board Chair of the Foundation for Vaccine Research in Washington DC.
