BIOTERRORISM: Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases

The Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases held its kickoff in the K-State Alumni Center.
The center's goal is to defend U.S. agricultural systems against bioterrorism and to find solutions to pathogens transferred between humans and animals.
"This is Kansas State University responding to one of the most imminent national threats," said Tom Thornton, President and CEO, Kansas Bioscience Authority. "The Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, the post 9/11 group that determined imminent terrorist threats, has determined that the most imminent threat to our nation's homeland security is a biological attack."
The center received 12 million dollars from the Department of Homeland Security. Researchers hope the center can provide scientific information in a national emergency.
http://www.ktka.com/news/2010/jun/28/kansas-state-university-launches-animal-disease-ce/

BIOTERRORISM: smallpox vaccine

Two U.S. universities are studying whether one strong injection of a new smallpox vaccine would offer greater protection than two doses of a weaker treatment provided over a period of four weeks, St. Louis University in Missouri announced this week (see GSN, May 18).
"Because of continuing concern about biowarfare and bioterrorism throughout the world, the United States government is working to improve its ability to protect its citizens in the event of a possible bioterrorist attack with the smallpox virus," chief researcher Sharon Frey, an infectious diseases professor at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine, said in a press release.
"If there is a smallpox outbreak, getting people vaccinated as quickly as possible will be a matter of urgency. Giving a single injection of a much stronger vaccine could allow us to protect people much more quickly, when time is of the essence," she added. "We're comparing two doses of the same vaccine to see if a single injection of the high-dose vaccine stimulates the body's defense system against smallpox as well as giving two injections of the lower dose."
The study is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and would involve 90 volunteers at St. Louis University and the University of Iowa. It would use Imvamune, a developmental vaccine produced by Danish biotechnology firm Bavarian Nordic (St. Louis University release, June 30).
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20100702_9539.php

Bioterrorism: learning resources

CDC: Emergency Preparedness & Response: Bioterrorism
Information for the general public and professionals on specific bioterrorism agents and emergency response.
PubMed
The primary database of information in biomedical and health sciences fields.
NLM Enviro-Health Links - Biological Warfare
Provides links to articles and PubMed searches on bioterrorism topics
http://guides.library.vcu.edu/bioterrorism/

BIOTERRORISM: CDC information

The Center for Disease Conrol and Prevention has a series of videos and a mass of information.
http://emergency.cdc.gov/training/historyofbt/

BIOTERRORISM: Illicit research on Brucellosis

The University of Wisconsin-Madison had ordered a veterinary researcher to stay out of a lab for five years after he performed research on a potential bioterrorism agent without receiving proper approval.
Professor Gary Splitter failed to receive authorization from local or federal authorities before his laboratory no later than 2007 produced antibiotic-resistant variants of brucellosis and tested them on mice. The work was a "major action violation," according to the National Institutes of Health, and earned the university a $40,000 penalty.
Brucellosis is a disease that generally infects livestock or other animals but can spread to humans through several means, including consumption of milk contaminated with the bacteria. Symptoms include fever, headache and back pain and the disease can produce "severe infections" of the central nervous system or heart lining, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The disease is not among the agents most likely to be used in an act of bioterrorism, "in part because it results in a high morbidity, but low mortality," according to a fact sheet from Saint Louis University. "However, it remains a threat because the disease process is long and incapacitating."
An antibiotic-resistant version of the disease could be harder to treat than a more standard form, according to the newspaper.
One laboratory staffer was infected with the disease, but it was not clear if that was linked to the strain involved in Splitter's work. The staffer apparently suffered no permanent effects.
"These are extremely dangerous compounds," according to university Provost Paul DeLuca. "They are very highly regulated and we want to be in full compliance with federal laws."
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20100513_7654.php

BIOTERRORISM: Research restictions in USA

A bibliometric analysis of the Bacillus anthracis and Ebola virus archival literature was conducted to determine whether negative consequences of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” (USA PATRIOT) Act and the 2002 Bioterrorism Preparedness Act on US select agent research could be discerned. Indicators of the health of the field, such as number of papers published per year, number of researchers authoring papers, and influx rate of new authors, indicated an overall stimulus to the field after 2002. As measured by interorganizational coauthorships, both B. anthracis and Ebola virus research networks expanded after 2002 in terms of the number of organizations and the degree of collaboration. Coauthorship between US and non US scientists also grew for Ebola virus but contracted for the subset of B. anthracis research that did not involve possession of viable, virulent bacteria. Some non-US institutions were dropped, and collaborations with others intensified. Contrary to expectations, research did not become centralized around a few gatekeeper institutions. Two negative effects were detected. There was an increased turnover rate of authors in the select agent community that was not observed in the control organism (Klebsiella pneumoniae) research community. However, the most striking effect observed was not associated with individual authors or institutions; it was a loss of efficiency, with an approximate 2- to 5-fold increase in the cost of doing select agent research as measured by the number of research papers published per millions of US research dollars awarded.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/04/29/0915002107.abstract