Data from influenza A virus (IAV) infected ferrets (Mustela putorius furo) provides invaluable information towards the study of novel and emerging viruses that pose a threat to human health. This gold standard animal model can recapitulate many clinical signs of infection present in IAV-infected humans, support virus replication of human and zoonotic strains without prior adaptation, and permit evaluation of virus transmissibility by multiple modes. While ferrets have been employed in risk assessment settings for >20 years, results from this work are typically reported in discrete stand-alone publications, making aggregation of raw data from this work over time nearly impossible. Here, we describe a dataset of 728 ferrets inoculated with 126 unique IAV, conducted by a single research group (NCIRD/ID/IPB/Pathogenesis Laboratory Team) under a uniform experimental protocol. This collection of morbidity, mortality, and viral titer data represents the largest publicly available dataset to date of in vivo-generated IAV infection outcomes on a per-individual ferret level.

Published Data Descriptor for more information: Kieran TJ, Sun X, Creager HM, Tumpey TM, Maine TR, Belser JA. 2024. An aggregated dataset of serial morbidity and titer measurements from influenza A virus-infected ferrets. Sci Data 11, 510. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03256-6

Additional publications using and describing data: Kieran TJ, Sun X, Maines TR, Beauchemin CAA, Belser JA. 2024. Exploring associations between viral titer measurements and disease outcomes in ferrets inoculated with 125 contemporary influenza A viruses. J Virol98:e01661-23.https://doi.org/10.1128/jvi.01661-23

Belser JA, Kieran TJ, Mitchell ZA, Sun X, Mayfield K, Tumpey TM, Spengler JR, Maines TR. 2024. Key considerations to improve the normalization, interpretation and reproducibility of morbidity data in mammalian models of viral disease. Dis Model Mech; 17 (3): dmm050511. doi: https://doi.org/10.1242/dmm.050511

Kieran TJ, Sun X, Maines TR, Belser JA. 2024. Machine learning approaches for influenza A virus risk assessment identifies predictive correlates using ferret model in vivo data. Communications Biology 7, 927. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06629-0