Earlier this week, you asked for comment and some fact-checking on the work

of Ralph Baric, professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at

Chapel Hill. He has prepared the following comments to share with you:

“The Baric laboratory has never inves gated strategies to create superviruses.
Studies focused on understanding the cross-species transmission poten al of
bat coronaviruses like SHC014 have been reviewed by the NIH and by the UNC
Ins tu onal Biosafety Commi ee for poten al of gain of func on
research and were deemed not to be gain of func on.

“The 2015 Nature Medicine manuscript published in collabora on with Dr. Shi
describes a chimeric virus built in a mouseadapted SARS-CoV 2003 genome.
Both the SARS-CoV 2003 strain and the chimera replicated in primary human
cells. However, the chimera was a enuated (i.e., less pathogenic) in mice as
compared to the parental virus. These studies demonstrated that intrinsic
proper es were encoded within the SHC014 spike that conferred an ability to
infect human cells, but certainly not be er than SARS-CoV 2003. We never
introduced muta ons into the SHC014 spike to enhance growth in human
cells, though the work demonstrated that bat SARS-like viruses were
intrinsically poised to emerge in the future. These recombinant clones and
viruses were never sent to China.

“Importantly, independent studies carried out by Italian scien sts and others
from around the world have con rmed that none of the bat SARS-like viruses
studied at UNC were related to SARS-CoV-2, the cause of the COVID-19
pandemic (Ballavilla T et al., Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci . 2020
Apr;24(8):4558-4564. doi: 10.26355/eurrev_202004_21041, PMID:
32373995). Upon request, we did share mice that expressed human
ACE2, the receptor for both SARS-CoV 2003 and SARS-CoV-2, with the Wuhan
Ins tute of Virology under a material transfer agreement, a requirement
dictated by scien c journals to ensure the free exchange of reagents needed
for research purposes only and fully supported by the NIH.

“The Baric laboratory has published three manuscripts in collabora on with

Dr. Shi, who generously provided the SHC014 spike sequence used in
the 2015 Nature Medicine paper. We were co-inves gators when I was

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 included on an EcoHealth NIH grant renewal applica on, which was funded
and then terminated a er six months in 2020. The sugges on that our
collabora ons were extensive and long-las ng is misleading. We collaborate
with numerous scien sts around the US and the globe, and our publica on
networks are summarized below for context.

“I believe this network summarizes papers in the past 5 years (as of April
2021) that include 2 or more papers, with larger bubbles represen ng more
extensive collabora ons.

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