A virus cannot reproduce. It has no machinery for making proteins, no way of generating energy, and no means of copying itself. Everything it does to you, it does using your own cells' equipment.
That single fact is the reason the keynote at this year's Molecular Virology Meeting was titled "Flip the Switch: Host Factors That Block or Boost Viruses", and it is the reason the title is a better summary of modern virology than any list of pathogens.
The 9th Molecular Virology Meeting (MVM 2026) concluded on 18 September 2026 at BRIC–National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, bringing together around 200 clinicians, researchers and students. The keynote was delivered by Dr Naveen Kumar, Director of ICMR–National Institute of Virology, Pune. The meeting was hosted by BRIC-NII with support from the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and the Regional Centre for Biotechnology, and comprised seven scientific sessions, spotlight talks, posters and a panel discussion.
Host factors, and why they are the interesting target
A virus is a package of genetic material — DNA or RNA — inside a protein coat, sometimes with a lipid envelope around that. It is not a cell. Outside a host it does nothing at all, which is why the question of whether viruses are alive has never had a satisfying answer.
To replicate, a virus must enter a cell, uncoat to release its genome, get that genome copied, have its proteins made by the host's ribosomes, assemble new particles and exit. At every one of those steps it depends on host molecules. The receptor it binds to is a host protein that exists for the cell's own purposes. The enzymes it borrows are the cell's. Even the membranes it buds through are the cell's.
Those borrowed molecules are host factors — and they come in two kinds. Proviral factors are the ones the virus needs; remove them and replication fails. Antiviral or restriction factors are the cell's own defences, proteins that detect or block viral components; the virus must evade or disable them to succeed. Hence "block or boost".
Why does this matter beyond the laboratory? Because it changes what a drug can target.
A drug aimed at a viral protein works on that virus and no other, and the virus can mutate the target. This is the well-known problem of antiviral resistance, and it is severe precisely because RNA viruses copy their genomes with error-prone enzymes and generate variation quickly.
A drug aimed at a host factor works differently. The host genome does not mutate to escape a drug the way a virus does, so resistance is harder to acquire. And because unrelated viruses often borrow the same cellular machinery, one host-directed drug may work against several of them — which is exactly what you want to have on the shelf when an unfamiliar virus appears. The trade-off is real and should be stated: interfering with a molecule the cell needs for its own functions risks toxicity in a way that targeting a foreign protein does not.
The viruses on the programme, and what they represent
MVM 2026 covered influenza, dengue, chikungunya, HIV, hepatitis E, West Nile virus, coronaviruses and respiratory syncytial virus, across viral entry and replication, host responses, immune regulation, viral adaptation and the molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis.
That list is not arbitrary; it is a map of India's actual viral burden, and it sorts into groups worth knowing.
The vector-borne viruses — dengue, chikungunya, West Nile — are transmitted by mosquitoes, which ties their epidemiology to climate, rainfall, urban water storage and vector control rather than to person-to-person contact. Dengue is the one with the notorious complication: four circulating serotypes, and antibody-dependent enhancement, in which prior infection with one serotype can make a subsequent infection with another worse rather than protective. That is why a dengue vaccine is a harder scientific problem than a measles vaccine, and we covered India's first approval in our explainer on India's first dengue vaccine.
The respiratory viruses — influenza, coronaviruses, RSV — spread person to person and are the pandemic-capable category. Influenza illustrates the two mechanisms of viral change that examinations ask about. Antigenic drift is gradual mutation, which is why the seasonal vaccine is reformulated each year. Antigenic shift is the abrupt reassortment of gene segments between influenza strains, producing something the population has no immunity to at all, and it is the mechanism behind pandemics rather than seasons.
The chronic infections — HIV, hepatitis E — persist rather than resolve, and pose the problem of a virus that establishes itself for years, which is a different therapeutic challenge from clearing an acute infection.
Zoonotic origin runs underneath most of this: influenza, coronaviruses and a great many emerging viruses cross from animals to humans, which is why surveillance cannot stop at human patients. That is the argument our piece on One Health and zoonotic diseases sets out in full — human, animal and environmental health monitored as one system.
The institutions, and a distinction worth getting right
The institutional detail in this meeting is unusually examinable, and one part of it is a trap.
BRIC — the Biotechnology Research and Innovation Council — is an apex autonomous body, registered as a Society in November 2023 under the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology. It was formed by subsuming fourteen previously separate DBT autonomous institutes into a single entity, which is why the host of this meeting is written as BRIC-NII rather than NII. The National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, is one of the fourteen; others include the National Institute of Plant Genome Research, the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine, and the Regional Centre for Biotechnology.
The reorganisation's logic is that fourteen institutes competing separately for funding, each maintaining its own administration and each holding its own instruments, produces duplication and makes cross-institutional projects hard. A single body can pool facilities and fund a programme rather than an institute. Whether consolidation of this kind delivers more science or more administration is a fair question, and the honest answer is that it is too early to say.
Now the trap. ICGEB is not an Indian autonomous institute and is not under BRIC. The International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology is an intergovernmental organisation, established in 1983 and autonomous since 1994, with over sixty member states and three components: Trieste (Italy), New Delhi (India) and Cape Town (South Africa). India hosts a component of an international body; it does not own it. A question that pairs ICGEB with DBT institutes is testing exactly this.
The third institution is ICMR-NIV, Pune — the National Institute of Virology — India's principal virology laboratory and the one that handles high-containment work on dangerous pathogens. It sits under the Indian Council of Medical Research, not under DBT. Three bodies, three parent arrangements: NII under BRIC under DBT, NIV under ICMR, ICGEB intergovernmental.
Platform technologies, and why the panel cared about them
The panel discussion — "Future of Virology Research and its Contribution in BioE3 Policy: Advancing Towards Viksit Bharat" — was moderated by Dr Nimesh Gupta (BRIC-NII) and brought together Dr Naveen Kumar (ICMR-NIV), Prof Saumitra Das (IISc), Dr Sudhanshu Vrati (RCB), Prof Sanjeev Galande (Shiv Nadar University) and Dr Subeer Mazumdar (Sun Pharma Science Foundation). Its subject was the gap between discovery and product: a connected pathway from validation to scale-up, funding that supports translation rather than individual projects, and platform technologies for vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.
Platform technology is the phrase to understand, because it is the difference between reacting to an outbreak in years and reacting in months.
A conventional vaccine is built around one pathogen. The process — growing the organism, inactivating or attenuating it, formulating, testing — is largely specific to it, and starting again for a new pathogen means starting close to the beginning.
A platform separates the delivery system from the pathogen-specific content. Build a system that reliably gets a genetic instruction into human cells and provokes an immune response, validate its safety once, and thereafter responding to a new virus means swapping the sequence rather than rebuilding the method. mRNA and viral-vector vaccines work this way. The regulatory apparatus benefits too, because a platform with an established safety record does not need every question asked afresh.
The same argument applies to diagnostics, where a validated assay format can be reprogrammed for a new target, and to antibody discovery, where the pipeline rather than the antibody is the asset.
This is what makes preparedness a research problem and not only a stockpiling problem. You cannot stockpile a vaccine for a virus that does not yet exist. You can build, validate and keep warm the capability to make one — along with the surveillance to notice early, the containment laboratories to characterise the pathogen, and the manufacturing to scale. The policy frame the panel worked within is set out in our explainer on the BioE3 policy for biomanufacturing, and the standards side of translation — what it takes for an Indian biological product to be accepted — in our piece on how India sets its biosimilar reference standards.
The meeting began in 2009 and has run annually since. Its value is the unglamorous kind: a country that wants to respond to the next outbreak with its own tools needs a virology community that knows each other's work, and that is built by people meeting for two days every year for seventeen years, not by an emergency committee convened when something arrives.
🔑 Revision block
- The meeting: 9th Molecular Virology Meeting (MVM 2026), concluded 18 September 2026 at BRIC-NII, New Delhi; about 200 participants; initiated 2009
- Keynote: Dr Naveen Kumar, Director, ICMR-National Institute of Virology, Pune — "Flip the Switch: Host Factors That Block or Boost Viruses"
- Supported by: ICGEB and the Regional Centre for Biotechnology; seven scientific sessions
- Panel: "Future of Virology Research and its Contribution in BioE3 Policy: Advancing Towards Viksit Bharat", moderated by Dr Nimesh Gupta
- A virus: genetic material (DNA or RNA) in a protein coat, sometimes enveloped; no ribosomes, no metabolism; replicates only inside a host cell
- Host factors: proviral factors the virus needs; antiviral or restriction factors the cell uses to block it
- Host-directed antivirals: resistance is harder to acquire and one drug may cover several viruses, but toxicity risk is higher than for virus-directed drugs
- Viruses on the programme: influenza, dengue, chikungunya, HIV, hepatitis E, West Nile virus, coronaviruses, respiratory syncytial virus
- Antigenic drift: gradual mutation, hence annual reformulation of the influenza vaccine
- Antigenic shift: abrupt reassortment of gene segments, the mechanism behind pandemics
- Dengue: four serotypes; antibody-dependent enhancement makes a second infection with a different serotype potentially worse
- Platform technology: separates delivery system from pathogen-specific content — validate once, swap the sequence; mRNA and viral-vector vaccines
- BRIC: Biotechnology Research and Innovation Council, Society registered November 2023 under DBT, subsuming 14 autonomous institutes including NII
- ICGEB: intergovernmental organisation, established 1983, autonomous since 1994, 60+ member states; components at Trieste, New Delhi and Cape Town — not a DBT institute
- ICMR-NIV: National Institute of Virology, Pune, under ICMR
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. A virus can replicate only inside a host cell because it lacks: (a) Genetic material (b) Ribosomes and metabolic machinery of its own (c) A protein coat (d) The ability to mutate
→ (b) — which is why host molecules are a viable drug target.
Q2. "Proviral host factors" are: (a) Cellular molecules the virus requires in order to replicate (b) Antibodies produced against the virus (c) Viral proteins that suppress the host immune system (d) Drugs that inhibit viral entry
→ (a) — the cell's own restriction factors are the antiviral counterpart.
Q3. An advantage of host-directed antivirals over virus-directed antivirals is that: (a) They act faster (b) They do not require clinical trials (c) They have no toxicity (d) Resistance is harder for the virus to acquire, and one drug may cover several viruses
→ (d) — toxicity risk is in fact the principal trade-off.
Q4. Antigenic shift in influenza refers to: (a) Gradual accumulation of point mutations (b) Abrupt reassortment of gene segments producing a strain the population has no immunity to (c) Change in the vaccine formulation each season (d) Movement of the virus between geographic regions
→ (b) — antigenic drift is the gradual mechanism.
Q5. Antibody-dependent enhancement is a particular complication in: (a) Influenza (b) Hepatitis E (c) Dengue (d) Rabies
→ (c) — prior infection with one of four serotypes can worsen a later infection with another.
Q6. The National Institute of Virology is located at: (a) New Delhi (b) Bengaluru (c) Hyderabad (d) Pune
→ (d) — under ICMR.
Q7. BRIC was formed by: (a) Subsuming fourteen autonomous institutes of the Department of Biotechnology into a single apex body (b) Merging ICMR and DBT (c) Converting ICGEB into an Indian institute (d) Renaming the Regional Centre for Biotechnology
→ (a) — registered as a Society in November 2023.
Q8. ICGEB is best described as: (a) An autonomous institute under the Department of Biotechnology (b) An intergovernmental organisation with components at Trieste, New Delhi and Cape Town (c) A laboratory of the Indian Council of Medical Research (d) A CSIR laboratory
→ (b) — India hosts a component; it does not own the organisation.
Q9. A "platform technology" for vaccines is valuable principally because: (a) It produces a cheaper vaccine (b) It eliminates the need for cold chain (c) The delivery system is validated once and the pathogen-specific content can be swapped (d) It works without an immune response
→ (c) — which compresses the time between identifying a pathogen and having a candidate.
Q10. Consider the following statements: 1. A country cannot stockpile a vaccine against a pathogen that has not yet emerged. 2. Preparedness therefore depends on maintaining capability — surveillance, containment laboratories, platforms and manufacturing. Which is/are correct? (a) 1 only (b) 2 only (c) Both 1 and 2 (d) Neither 1 nor 2
→ (c) — which is why preparedness is a research problem, not only a procurement one.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
Biology and health appear steadily in the NDA general ability paper, and virology has been a growing share of it since 2020.
The institution question is the highest-yield form here, and it is where candidates lose marks fastest. NIV is at Pune, under ICMR. NII is at New Delhi, under BRIC, under DBT. ICGEB is intergovernmental, with a New Delhi component. The ministry chain is asked as often as the location: the Department of Biotechnology and the Indian Council of Medical Research are different parents, and ICMR sits under the Department of Health Research in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, not under Science and Technology.
The concept question covers antigenic drift against shift, and this pair appears almost every year in some examination. Drift is gradual and explains the annual vaccine; shift is abrupt and explains pandemics.
The disease-vector question asks which mosquito carries what. Aedes aegypti for dengue and chikungunya; Anopheles for malaria; Culex for West Nile and Japanese encephalitis. A short table learnt once answers this permanently.
The definitional question asks what a virus is — and the discriminating answer names the absence of ribosomes and metabolism, not just small size. Candidates who define a virus as "a very small germ" are not answering the question asked.
For the SSB interview, virology gives a candidate a genuinely good line on preparedness. The argument that you cannot stockpile a vaccine for a virus that does not exist, so you must instead maintain surveillance, laboratories and platform capability, is a serious answer to a question about national resilience — and it applies well beyond public health.
Preparing for NDA? Science questions reward learning institutions with their parent ministry attached — location alone is half a fact. Build the base with our NDA general ability notes, follow the daily NDA current affairs, and prepare with our faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
✍️ Written by Col Vijyanat Thakur — Defence studies faculty at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk.