Fired Winnipeg Scientist Involved in Gain-of-Function Research at Wuhan Lab, Where Canada Sent Virus Samples

The Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, in China's central Hubei province, on February 3, 2021. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

Xiangguo Qiu, one of the two scientists fired from Winnipeg’s high-security laboratory, was involved in gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a recently declassified intelligence document shows.

The document also says that Ms. Qiu was advised to conceal her project from the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) had asked for virus samples from the Canadian lab.

Compiled by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the document is part of a 600-page package on the firing of the two scientists that was recently released after years of requests by MPs.

In March 2019, the Winnipeg lab shipped 15 strains of Nipah and Ebola viruses to Wuhan. The request for the shipment was facilitated through Ms. Qiu. But the declassified documents show that Ms. Qiu also sent antibodies and other material to China without prior approval.

Gain-of-function (GOF) involves increasing either the lethal level or the transmissibility of pathogens, or both. Due to its risky nature, GOF experiments on lethal viruses is forbidden in many parts of the world.

Ms. Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, a fellow scientist at the NML, were escorted out of the lab in July 2019, and fired in January 2021 amid investigations into their undisclosed collaborations with Chinese governmental entities and the Chinese military.

Among the revelations in the documents are that the two left restricted visitors in the Winnipeg lab unescorted and allowed them to access the NML’s secure network. Some of the visitors, who were Chinese nationals, attempted to remove material from the lab, and also downloaded material from the computer network onto personal devices.

At least one of the visitors to the Winnipeg lab was from the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, a university used by China’s People’s Liberation Army for the study of advanced biological technology. CSIS says open-source material has shown the woman wearing Chinese military attire.

The documents say Ms. Qiu gave access to at least two employees of a “PRC [People’s Republic of China] institution whose work is not aligned with Canadian interests.”

Another restricted visitor to the NML was a senior technician at the Wuhan lab, who CSIS says may have been the first researcher from China to come to Canada directly facilitated by Ms. Qiu. CSIS mentions the hiring of the technician as part of an agreement between Ms. Qiu and the WIV, which included providing “research expenses, instruments and equipment, research assistance,” and other items to “guarantee the normal operation of [Ms. Qiu’s] scientific and research work.”

At one point in 2018, the senior technician attempted to remove 10 tubes from the Winnipeg lab, the documents say.

Ms. Qiu and Mr. Cheng were also willing participants in China’s “talent programs,” which are aimed at boosting China’s national technological capabilities and pose a “serious threat” by “incentivizing economic espionage and theft of intellectual property,” CSIS says.

As well, the two collaborated with Chinese military leaders who are in charge of research into biological weapons, biosafety, bio-defence, and bio-terrorism.

A lab technician works in a mobile lab at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg on Nov. 3, 2014. The Canadian Press/Pool, Reuters - Lyle Stafford

The document said that Mr. Qiu and Mr. Cheng were not truthful in their responses to the investigators, and that their continued employment at the NML posed a security risk.

“[The disclosed information show Ms. Qiu’s] complete lack of candour regarding her relationship with [PRC] institutions; and her reckless judgment regarding decisions that could have impacted public safety and the interests of Canada,” CSIS said.

GOF Projects

The CSIS document, issued on June 30, 2020, says that Ms. Qiu, along with some employees at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, were approved by a Chinese evaluation committee in the spring of 2019 to conduct a “CAS [Chinese Academy of Sciences] High-end User Nurturing Project.”

Ms. Qiu was listed as being in charge of the “Overall Planning” of the project, while a person listed as a vice-director and senior scientist at the Wuhan lab was put in charge of handling “Project Design.” The WIV senior technician Ms. Qiu had facilitated to work at the NML was put in charge of “Animal Infection.”

The project involved the use of reverse genetics to create synthetic virus strains.

“This was to assess cross-species infection and pathogenic risks of bat filoviruses for future vaccine development purposes, which suggests that gain-of-function (GOF) studies were possibly to take place,” the CSIS document says.

The project, assigned a budget of around $50,000 per year, was to take place from June 2019 to May 2021.

The CSIS document notes that in 2015, the WIV’s vice-director was involved in GOF experiments with U.S. researchers “as part of a study that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus,” including one related to the virus that caused SARS, “which could jump directly from bats to humans.”

“The international scientific community raised concerns as to whether or not it should allow laboratory research that increased the virulence, ease of spread or host range of dangerous pathogens,” the document says.

“Some scientists disapproved of the study, noting that it was a ‘new, non-natural risk’ and ‘provided little benefit and reveals little about the risk that the wild virus in bats poses to humans’. However, this study was allowed to continue, under review, by the US National Institute of Health (NIH).”

Some scientists and U.S. politicians have raised concerns that U.S. taxpayer money has been used at the Wuhan lab to conduct risky GOF research on coronaviruses. This was disputed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Francis Collins, former NIH director, who said the experiments funded by the United States didn’t involve GOF research.

Ebola Research

Ms. Qiu and the Wuhan lab vice-director were also listed as project designers and managers on another project that may also involve GOF. The lab’s senior technician who was then also working at the NML, was put in charge of the project’s mRNA vaccine construction.

One of the objectives of the project was to establish mouse-adapted and guinea pig-adapted Ebola viruses, “with the aim of rescuing both adapted viruses through reverse genetics for study/production of mRNA vaccines.”

The P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on May 13, 2020. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

Another stated purpose of the project was to help set up procedures and protocols for animal research activities at the Wuhan lab.

The project documents included a note that the NML management shouldn’t be informed of this project as the Wuhan lab was in the process of requesting pathogens from the Winnipeg lab.

“To avoid confusing the leaders, it’s better not to let National Microbiology Laboratory know about this project,” the note reads.

The project, assigned a budget of $300,000, was to take place from Jan. 1, 2019, to Dec. 31, 2021.

The Epoch Times contacted Ms. Qiu for comment in the past but received no reply.

Undisclosed Shipments

The CSIS documents reveal that Ms. Qiu shipped material out of the Winnipeg lab without authorization on a number of occasions.

This included the shipment of antibodies to the China National Institute for Food and Drug Control. She also sent small amounts of antibodies to labs in the UK and the United States for testing, the documents say.

The documents also show that prior to the March 2019 shipment of Ebola and Nipah from the Winnipeg lab to the Wuhan lab, Ms. Qiu had said in emails to Wuhan lab employees in the summer of 2018 that a formal agreement was not required. She said this was because “no one owns the IP.” She also expressed “hope there is another way around.”

GOF on Nipah

A U.S. scientist testified before the U.S. Senate in 2022 that the Wuhan lab was engaged in synthetic biology research on the deadly Nipah virus.

“The Nipah virus is a smaller virus than SARS2 [virus causing COVID-19] and is much less transmissible. But it is one of the deadliest viruses, with a greater than 60 percent lethality. This is 60-times deadlier than SARS2,” Dr. Steven Quay, a Seattle-based physician-scientist, told a U.S. Senate subcommittee at a hearing on Aug. 3, 2022.

“This is the most dangerous research I have ever encountered.”

Synthetic biology involves creating or redesigning biological entities and systems. GOF is an example of synthetic biology.

In a previous interview with The Epoch Times, Dr. Quay explained that his research was based on examining the information from early COVID-19 patients that China had uploaded to international databases. He said he found unexpected contaminants in the specimens, including the Nipah virus, which he said were likely contained because of cross-contamination from other research at the WIV.

NML Protocols

In 2021, in response to questions from MPs as to why the NML agreed to ship virus samples to the Wuhan lab, NML management said the shipment followed all proper protocols and was in response to a letter from the Chinese lab indicating that they were to be used for understanding their pathophysiology—the nature of infection—and the development of antivirals.

The National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg in a file photo. The Canadian Press/John Woods

“Prior to the transfer, one of the essential aspects of the transfer process is receiving a letter from the receiving institute with respect to their intent,” Dr. Guillaume Poliquin, then the NML’s acting vice-president, told MPs at a parliamentary committee meeting on March 20, 2021.

Conservative MP John Williamson questioned why the NML management was trusting of the claims made in the Wuhan lab’s request document.

“You’re taking a request from a nation that has a history of theft and lies, and accepting that because it’s what the law in this country says, that this is sufficient, at a time when our national security institutes are warning academia in general to be very careful,” Mr. Williamson said.

Dr. Poliquin defended the NML’s processes.

“There is an extensive approach that is undertaken prior to the transfer of materials, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology is an organization dedicated to public health,” he said.

The Epoch Times asked the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), which is in charge of the NML, about the claim that the Wuhan lab is dedicated to public health, despite having received a CSIS “secret” document—contained in the declassified package—about the lab’s extensive Chinese military ties some 10 months before the committee meeting.

Without responding to the question directly, PHAC said GOF activities have stringent regulations and cited its own rules for any such research.

“Any project that is identified as having the potential for gain-of-function is referred to the Institutional Biosafety Committee. These projects are then subject to additional review and scrutiny, and they only proceed once all risks are properly mitigated,” a spokesperson said.

Health Minister Mark Holland, who oversees the PHAC, said at a Feb. 28 press conference that the “lack of adherence to security protocols” at the NML is unacceptable, but added that there was not as much awareness in 2019 on the extent to which China is willing to go to “influence science and obtain information.”

The Conservatives meanwhile are criticizing the Liberal government for allowing a person who is “a very serious and credible danger” to access the high-security lab.

“This is a massive national security failure by Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government, which he fought tooth and nail to cover up, including defying four parliamentary orders and taking the House of Commons Speaker to court,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said in a Feb. 28 statement making references to the Liberal government’s refusal to provide the documents related to the firing of the two scientists.

Amid demands by the House of Commons for the release of the documents, the government took the Speaker of the House of Commons to court in 2021 to avoid the order. The court case was dropped after Parliament was dissolved when an election was called later that year.

Following the 2021 election, the Liberal government initially proposed to release the documents to MPs from different parties on the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. However, this was opposed by the Conservatives, who said that this special committee reports to the prime minister rather than to the parliamentarians.

The Liberals subsequently formed an ad hoc committee of MPs from different parties to review the documents before public disclosure.

Earlier this week, on March 4, the Liberals and the NDP defeated a Conservative Party motion to launch a parliamentary committee study of the documents.

Andrew Chen contributed to this report.