Wuhan Institute of Virology
The Institute was founded in 1956 as the Wuhan Microbiology Laboratory under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). In 1961, it became the South China Institute of Microbiology, and in 1962 was renamed to Wuhan Microbiology Institute. In 1970, it became the Microbiology Institute of Hubei Province when the Hubei Commission of Science and Technology took over the administration. In June 1978, it was returned to the CAS and renamed Wuhan Institute of Virology [1].
In 2015, the National Bio-safety Laboratory was completed at a cost of 300 million yuan ($44 million) at the Institute in collaboration with French engineers from Lyon, and was the first biosafety level 4 (BSL–4) laboratory to be built in mainland China [2][3]. The laboratory took over a decade to complete from its conception in 2003, and scientists such as U.S. molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright expressed concern of previous escapes of the SARS virus at Chinese laboratories in Beijing, and the pace and scale of China’s plans for expansion into BSL–4 laboratories [2]. The Laboratory has strong ties to the Galveston National Laboratory in the University of Texas [4]. In 2020, Ebright called the Institute a “world-class research institution that does world-class research in virology and immunology”[4]
Resources
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20200201102116/http://english.whiov.cas.cn/About_Us2016/History2016/
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 