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In the fall of 2017, a year before an unfamiliar virus captured the world’s attention with an explosive outbreak in East Asia that left tens of millions of pigs dead, immunologist Waithaka Mwangi and his graduate students were already aware of the culprit and its imminent threat to the swine industry. Behind the glass of a biosafety cabinet at Kansas State University’s Biosecurity Research Institute—one of two sites in the US authorized to conduct research on the deadly pathogen—they carefully extracted a few milliliters of fluid from a test tube containing live African swine fever virus (ASFV) collected from the spleens of infected pigs. In another room down the hall, the researchers administered droplets of the fluid into the nostrils of piglets. In total, more than 60 young pigs were exposed to the virus, and the team waited to see how they’d fare.
ASFV is typically ...
