Malik Peiris
Professor Malik Peiris FRS, d'Honneur, is a renowned Sri Lankan pathologist and virologist. His research interests include ecology, evolution, pathogenesis, epidemiology of animal-human influenza and other human respiratory viral infections, authoring over 320 research publications. Peiris is most notable for being the first person to isolate SARS virus.
He holds the Tam Wah-Ching Professorship, Division of Public Health Laboratory Sciences, University of Hong Kong, where he continues to lead ground breaking research with a particular interest in newly emerging viruses such as Coronaviruses at the animal-human interface. He serves as a member on the Advisory panel on Emerging Infectious Diseases, Health Protection Agency of Hong Kong, was on the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong and was previously a member of the World Health Organisation's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization.
Together with his co-workers, he has published more than 600 scientific papers in a research career spanning more than 35 years and is credited with 32 scientific patents relating to diagnosis of viral infections.
Early Life and Education
Peiris was born on 10 November 1949 in Kandy. He completed education from St. Anthony's College, Kandy. He attended the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya to study medicine in October 1967. He graduated with MBBS honours in September 1972.Academic and Clinical Training
After completing the clinical internships, he joined the Department of Bacteriology in the medical school as a junior lecturer and was awarded a Commonwealth scholarship in 1977 for post graduate research training at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford, with Dr. J.S. Porterfield, as his research adviser and mentor. He was awarded the D.Phil degree in 1981. A major aspect of his dissertation was the paradoxical role that antibodies may play in facilitating rather than blocking the entry of viruses such as the West Nile virus and the dengue virus into macrophages, the first line defense cells of the body.Research training in Oxford was followed by two years of training in clinical pathology as a Registrar in Virology with Professor Richard Madeley at the department of Clinical Virology, Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne, culminating in the award of the Membership of the Royal College of Pathologists. Professor Malik Peiris then served as the scientific director of the HKU-Pasteur Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong.
After further work in the UK and Sri Lanka, he founded the clinical diagnostic and public health virology laboratory at Queen Mary Hospital, University of Hong Kong, in 1995. Peiris and his team of scientists and doctors, were strategically placed to face the challenges of the Avian influenza virus outbreak, the severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus outbreak and the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus outbreak.
Original research carried out by the Hong Kong laboratories have made major contributions to the knowledge of the causative viruses of these diseases and the understanding, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the diseases that these viruses cause. During the period of 2003 to 2004, Peiris was credited with authoring the highest number of high impact publications in the scientific world.
Notable findings
Avian Influenza
In 1997, after the first human outbreak of the Avian Influenza Virus H5N1 in Hong Kong, Professor Peiris's attention was turned to the virus, which claimed the lives a third of its victims. Research in his laboratory showed that the virus induces high levels of chemicals called cytokines when it infects a type of white blood cell. This was later shown to correlate with high levels of cytokines in infected humans. This so-called "cytokine storm" is now recognized as a major mechanism of avian influenza virus pathogenesis.Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
In 2003, Hong Kong suffered another virus outbreak, this time from an unknown respiratory disease, termed SARS. Peiris became known worldwide when his laboratory was the first to isolate the virus, a Novel coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV. Peiris led the team which isolated the causal agent for the respiratory infection SARS in early 2003. By June 2003, the Peiris laboratory and their collaborators had developed a rapid diagnostic test for SARS-CoV using Real-time polymerase chain reaction. The team has published the standard laboratory manual book on the SARS coronavirus.COVID-19
In February 2020, Peiris and his colleague, Leo L. M. Poon, published a definitive article in the Journal Nature Medicine presaging the pandemic of a new coronavirus. In March 2020, Peiris reported that a Pomeranian dog was infected with COVID-19. At first, these findings were dismissed, but other COVID-19 animal infections across the world, substantiated Peiris's findings that animals could be infected by the virus such as the case of a tiger in Bronx Zoo and a pug dog in North Carolina both testing positive.Li-Meng Yan, a whistleblower who worked with Peiris at the University of Hong Kong, claimed that Peiris knew early about the rapid growth of COVID-19 cases in January 2020, "but didn't do anything about it."
Honours
He is the first Sri Lankan to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London . This is considered the highest scientific honour in the Commonwealth.He was decorated as Knight of the Légion d'Honneur of France on 15 October 2007
He was awarded the Silver Bauhinia Star in 2008 from the government of Hong Kong SAR for "outstanding achievements in the field of virology and pathology, in particular his contribution to the prevention and control of infectious diseases."
Malik continues to work at the University of Hong Kong and was appointed scientific director of the Hong Kong University-Pasteur Institute.
In May 2017, Malik was elected as a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences
He holds several academic positions by being the Chair Professor of Microbiology and Tam Wah-ching Professor of Medical Sciences at The University of Hong Kong, Honorary Consultant Microbiologist at Queen Mary Hospital and the Scientific Director of the HKU-Pasteur Research Centre at Hong Kong.