Malik Peiris

Joseph Malik Sriyal Peiris was born in Sri Lanka and studied medicine at the University of Ceylon. This was followed by a DPhil at the William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, U.K., where he made significant discoveries on the mechanism of dengue virus pathogenesis. After further work in the U.K. and Sri Lanka he set up a virology lab at Queen Mary Hospital, part of the University of Hong Kong, in 1995.1

After the first outbreak of avian influenza H5N1 in humans in Hong Kong in 1997, Professor Peiris's attention was turned to this virus, which claimed the lives of one third of its victims. Research in his laboratory showed that the bird flu virus induced high levels of chemicals called cytokines when it infected a type of white blood cell.2 This was later shown to correlate with high levels of cytokines in infected humans.3,4  This so-called cytokine storm is now recognised as a major mechanism of avian influenza virus pathogenesis.

In 2003 Hong Kong suffered another virus outbreak, this time from an unknown respiratory disease, termed severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Malik shot to fame when his laboratory was the first to isolate the virus, a novel coronovirus (CoV), now known as SARS-CoV.5

Malik continues to work at the University of Hong Kong and was recently appointed the scientific director of the Hong Kong University-Pasteur Institute. He is also the first Sri Lankan to be elected to the Royal Society of London, the highest scientific honour in the Commonwealth.

References

1. Mandavilli. 2004. Profile: Malik Peiris. Nature Medicine 10, 886.

2. Cheung et al. 2002. Induction of proinflammatory cytokines in human macrophages by influenza A (H5N1) viruses: a mechanism for the unusual severity of human disease? Lancet 360, 1831-7.

3. Peiris et al. 2003. Re-emergence of fatal human influenza A subtype H5N1 disease. Lancet 363, 617-9.

4. de Jong et al. 2006 Fatal outcome of human influenza A (H5N1) is associated with high viral load and hypercytokinemia. Nature Medicine 12, 1203-7.

5. Peiris et al. 2003. Coronavirus as a possible cause of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Lancet 361, 1319-25.