BioCentury
ARTICLE | Targets & Mechanisms

Bon voyage!

A Baylor team discovers how to culture norovirus, solving a 40-year-old problem

September 15, 2016 7:00 AM UTC

For over 40 years, researchers have tried to grow norovirus in the lab without success. A Baylor College of Medicine group has cracked the problem by using 3-D cultures to discover exactly what cell type they need to grow. The resulting method, published last month in Science, could accelerate the search for a vaccine against the so-called "cruise ship" virus, which represents the world's leading cause of gastroenteritis.

The study was the month's second boost for the field, coming a week after another Science paper by a Washington University team identified the receptor used by the mouse norovirus to infect cells...