Leondios G. Kostrikis
Leondios G. Kostrikis (born 1964) is a Cypriot biochemist and scientist from Cyprus and a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Cyprus. Early life and career

Kostrikis received his scientific education in biochemistry from New York University. In 1987, he received his B.Sc. degree, supported by a Fulbright Scholarship. In 1993, he received his Ph.D. He then moved to Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC) to do HIV research. In 1999, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Rockefeller University. In 2003, he returned to Cyprus. He became Head of Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology and Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Cyprus. SARS-CoV-2 Deltacron hybrid variant
On 29 November 2021 following the emergence of COVID-19 Omicron variant, Kostrikis announced that a new aware of COVID-19 variant was the first reported by his Cypriot health research team from the University of Cyprus in Nicosia, so called "Deltacron". It is combined of Delta and Omicron mutations. Since then, many virologists have argued that it is most likely the result of a laboratory contamination, which purportedly shares specific properties with two different strains. Although Cypriot health research group was dubbed the supposed new variant, "Deltacron". Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove (head of W.H.O. 's COVID-19 Technical Leader), Richard Neher (head of Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology and associate professor of University of Basel), and other scientists, who challenged this announcement, saying a lab mistake is a more probable explanation for Cyprus lab's finding. At some point, a few people will be unlucky and they will be actually infected or reinfected and killed by two different variants at the same time, and when two different variants are in a single cell replicating at the same time, and it is not only that two different variants can invade the same cell in everyone's body by some randomly events. However, there's a change that they genetic material, and that is called a "recombination event". When that happens, they can actually formed and merged a new hybrid variant. In this case, it looks like that's happened more than once that there's a two different types of hybrid variant: Delta variant as the core of virus, which is more dangerous; and Omicron variant as a spike protein, which is more transmissible. "Deltacron" phenomenon is reported by Dr. Kostrikis and the World Health Organization on January 10, 2022. From the early summer of 2021 to the late summer of 2022, Kostrikis and his health research team in Cyprus are decided to start to tracking the hybrid outbreak in real time when public health experts uploaded the online databases, such as Worldometers and GISAID. Unfortunately, COVID-19 Deltacron hybrid variant has now a pre-dominant strain and has more transmissible and spreading as a "predictably concern", which have caused a huge infection waves, especially circulated parts of America, Canada, Mexico, Latin American region, European region, Australia and New Zealand, and among other nations (including Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos). This hybrid variant is expected given that a large number of circulation, an intense number of circulation that we saw with both Delta and Omicron mutations, and given the sheer number of changes and is similar to Original COVID-19 virus, as well as Alpha, Delta, Omicron, and other variants, but it was much easier for researchers, scientists, and public health professionals. However, as of result, Deltacron hybrid variant of COVID-19 is now less severe disease and deaths and not spreading as much as of now. References

External links
 Google Scholar: Leondios Kostrikis

Living people
New York University alumni
Date of birth missing (living people)
Academic staff of the University of Cyprus
Cypriot scientists
21st-century biochemists
Year of birth missing (living people)