Update (October 19): The director of the Boston University team has told STAT that the researchers were not obliged to declare their plans to work with a chimeric virus to NIAID because they didn't use agency funding for that part of the work. He also acknowledged that the guidelines weren't completely clear, saying: “It is a murky world, but in our view because the funding was not supporting the work that was supported in this paper, that it wasn’t necessary to report it to NIH.” In response, NIAID told STAT that NIH was “examining the matter” to ascertain whether the research was indeed subject to its oversight.
A Boston University project that investigated a chimeric version of SARS-CoV-2 was not fully cleared with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, despite the agency having partially funded the work, STAT reports.
The research was described in a preprint last week ...
