The COVID-19 Pandemic Has Made German Virologist Christian Drosten an Unlikely Cult Figure
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NEWS FEATURES Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ on May 1, 2020 THE CORONAVIRUS CZAR The COVID-19 pandemic has made German virologist Christian Drosten an unlikely cult figure By Kai Kupferschmidt, in Berlin PHOTO: VOLKER LANNERT VOLKER PHOTO: 462 1 MAY 2020 • VOL 368 ISSUE 6490 sciencemag.org SCIENCE Published by AAAS NEWS but now one of those pathogens was killing virus he has spent most of his life studying. patients in a hospital a few blocks away. “If this were influenza, for instance, I would And instead of teaching virology to a few not be doing this,” he says. hundred students, Drosten now addresses hundreds of thousands of anxious Germans. DROSTEN’S CORONAVIRUS CAREER effectively Twice a week around 10 a.m., he sets a blue began on Saturday, 15 March 2003, when a microphone on his desk, puts on head- 32-year-old doctor from Singapore named phones, and waits for a science journalist Leong Hoe Nam was taken off a plane in from German radio station NDR Info to call Frankfurt, Germany, and taken to the city’s him. For the next 40 minutes, he answers university clinic. Leong had treated patients questions about vaccines, respiratory drop- in Singapore before attending an infectious lets, school closures, or masks. The podcast, diseases course in New York City, and had de- simply titled Coronavirus Update, has made veloped symptoms consistent with an alarm- Drosten the face, or rather the voice, of the ing new respiratory disease that was rapidly pandemic in Germany. More than 1 million people regularly download what has become the country’s most popular podcast. Drosten is one of the world’s foremost ex- “Many people may not perts on coronaviruses; his career has closely understand everything tracked their emergence as a global threat. Now, he is also a popular—if nerdy—hero. he says. But it is Downloaded from In one widely shared meme, his face, with a pair of horn-rimmed glasses photoshopped comforting to listen on it, sits next to three movie stills of actor to someone explaining Jeff Goldblum, to whom he bears a passing resemblance. “He has fought dinosaurs, body what is going on.” snatchers, and aliens,” the caption reads, “so http://science.sciencemag.org/ Holger Wormer, I’ll trust him with this virus too.” Drosten’s Technical University of Dortmund cult status reminds Holger Wormer, a jour- nalism professor at the Technical University of Dortmund, of Stephen Hawking’s: “Many spreading in Asia. That same day, the World people may not understand everything he Health Organization (WHO) had christened says. But it is comforting to listen to some- the new disease “severe acute respiratory one explaining what is going on.” syndrome,” or SARS. His calm, considered communication has At the time, Drosten was building up a earned Drosten widespread appreciation. lab for molecular diagnostics at the Bern- “It’s a stroke of luck that we have someone hard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine here in Germany who is recognized world- in Hamburg, Germany. The Frankfurt viro- on May 1, 2020 wide as an expert on coronaviruses and who logists sent Leong’s blood and other sam- is willing and able to communicate so well,” ples to Drosten, hoping he could help iden- says Volker Stollorz, head of the German tify what was believed to be a new virus. But Christian Drosten admits Science Media Center. On 20 April, the Ger- tests for everything from adenoviruses to the pandemic surprised him, man Research Foundation announced it was paramyxoviruses came back negative. despite having worked on awarding Drosten a one-off prize for “out- About 1 week later, however, when coronaviruses for 17 years. standing science communication during the Drosten was in Frankfurt to defend his doc- COVID-19 pandemic.” toral thesis, the same virologists told him Drosten also explains coronaviruses to they had managed to grow the virus in a politicians. He has advised German Chancel- petri dish. Drosten realized this would allow n a recent Monday morning, lor Angela Merkel—they chatted by phone him to use a new catch-all method he had Christian Drosten said goodbye to for about an hour recently, he says—and developed for identifying unknown viruses, his wife and 2-year-old son in front Minister of Health Jens Spahn. He has been which amplified viral genetic material so it of his apartment block and got on called Germany’s “coronavirus-explainer-in- could be sequenced and checked against on- his bicycle for his daily commute to chief” and “the coronavirus pope,” the Ger- line databases. Drosten picked up a sample, Charité University Hospital here. man equivalent of a “coronavirus czar.” then drove the 5 hours back to Hamburg in It looked like a scene from Yet colleagues describe Drosten, 47, as his old Opel and went straight to his lab. Af- normal daily life. But of course an unlikely character for his new role. “He ter a few days with little sleep, he had a small it wasn’t. His wife was going for is not someone who seeks out this kind of part of the new virus’ genome. The closest a walk with their child instead of bringing attention,” says Isabella Eckerle, a match was a cattle coronavirus Ohim to the day care center, which was closed. former lab member who now runs that doesn’t infect people. “My first The Berlin streets Drosten traversed were a laboratory for emerging viral dis- Science’s thought was, maybe it is some kind eerily quiet, most shops were closed, and eases at the University of Geneva. COVID-19 of contamination from the FCS,” the coverage some people on the sidewalks wore masks. Drosten says he wouldn’t have is supported fetal calf serum used to grow cells in Charité’s Institute of Virology, which Drosten stepped into the limelight if SARS- by the the lab, Drosten recalls. heads, was studying exotic viruses, as always, CoV-2 weren’t exactly the kind of Pulitzer Center. But he and his colleague Stephan SCIENCE sciencemag.org 1 MAY 2020 • VOL 368 ISSUE 6490 463 Published by AAAS NEWS | FEATURES Microbes and man Christian Drosten’s career paralleled the emergence of coronaviruses as a serious human threat. He worked on severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and in January, his lab developed the first test for SARS-CoV-2, the new pandemic virus. 1966 1967 1968 1975 2002 2003 2004 2005 2012 2019 2020 229E OC43 Name Family of SARS SARS-CoV NL63 HKU1 MERS-CoV COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 (cold virus) (cold virus) “coronavirus” coronaviruses outbreak discovered (cold virus) (cold virus) discovered pandemic discovered discovered discovered coined established begins in discovered discovered begins China in China Coronaviruses 1960 1965 1970 1975 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 Christian Drosten 1972 1994 2003 2007 2013 2017 2018 2020 Born in Starts Develops Becomes Work with Becomes Also becomes Lab Lingen, studying frst test head of the Marion head of Charité research develops Germany medicine in for SARS University Koopmans University director of frst test Frankfurt, of Bonn’s shows Hospital’s Charité Global for SARS- Germany Institute of camels carry Institute of Health, CoV-2 Virology MERS-CoV Virology a new center Downloaded from Günther quickly realized they were seeing caused by a paramyxovirus, had jumped to too, originated in camels. It was a warning a deadly new member of the family. “At the humans from bats. They also showed that sign, Drosten said at the time, that MERS time, medical students learned hardly any- Nipah, another bat-borne virus, originated could follow the same course as SARS, thing about coronaviruses,” Drosten says. in Africa, even though it was discovered which had originated in bats, and evolve http://science.sciencemag.org/ The only two known to cause disease in in Malaysia after hundreds of pig farmers to become a true human disease. Animal humans, named OC43 and 229E, accounted there developed encephalitis in 1999. coronaviruses, it seemed, posed a particular for a small percentage of human colds ev- Scientists discovered two new corona- threat of sparking a pandemic. ery winter. This new virus was a very dif- viruses in the years after the SARS outbreak, ferent beast. SARS killed 10% of the almost both of which caused the common cold. Then WHEN ANOTHER severe respiratory syn- 8000 people it infected in nearly 30 coun- in 2012, researchers isolated a new corona- drome emerged this year, Drosten—who tries before it was contained. virus that spelled greater danger. It came moved to the prestigious Charité University Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease from a 60-year-old man in Saudi Arabia Hospital in 2017—was prepared. After see- Control and Prevention and the University of who had developed pneumonia. Intrigued, ing the first rumors about a coronavirus in Hong Kong realized the culprit was a corona- Drosten geared his research to the new China online, Victor Corman, who leads the virus around the same time. But Drosten was agent, which was soon called the Middle East lab’s virus diagnostics group, began to scour on May 1, 2020 the first to develop a diagnostic test, and he respiratory syndrome (MERS) virus. In 2013, existing sequences of SARS-related corona- distributed the protocol freely on the inter- he reported on a wealthy 73-year-old patient viruses, isolated from bats, for regions that net. It earned him international recogni- from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, who were the same across different viruses. He tion as well as the Federal Cross of Merit, an was treated for MERS in Germany and died.