The primary focus of the Queensland Paediatric Infectious Diseases Laboratory is the development of rapid molecular diagnostic assays to detect and characterise infectious agents in children. This activity has resulted in the development of more than 100 molecular protocols which have been placed into routine diagnostic practice. These assays were used to characterise respiratory infections in children, which resulted in recognition that approximately 40% of these infections could not be diagnosed.

The development of these diagnostic assays, together with the characterisation of respiratory infections in children were the basis for a research program to determine if new, as yet undiscovered, viral agents were the cause of these infections. This resulted in the discovery of a new human polyomavirus from respiratory secretions taken from a child with pneumonia. Since this discovery, twelve new human polyomaviruses have been discovered, with many of these associated with the respiratory tract.

Polyomaviruses are known to cause tumours in other animals, and therefore the association of the newly discovered polyomaviruses with cancer in humans was further investigated. It was found that Merkel cell polyomavirus sequences were present in tissues from patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma, but generally not in normal control tissues taken from the same patient. The presence of virus in these tissues was confirmed by immuno-histochemical antibody staining. Additional evidence suggests that the circular viral genome is present in these tissues as a linear molecule.

Further studies are ongoing to determine if viral genome integration has occurred, and its potential effect on cell transformation. This will form the basis of future research to elucidate the putative role of MCPyV in the development of non-small cell lung carcinoma.