The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon have created heightened attention on companies with technology to detect biological or chemical warfare.
Though certain private firms don’t welcome the spotlight, given the sensitivity of defense work, some of their researchers find that recent events make the threat of bioterrorism seem more real than ever before.
Dr. Glen Evans, a biologist and chief executive of Egea Biosciences Inc. in San Diego, admitted the malevolence of recent events has changed his perception.
“Now that we have seen the sophistication of the Sept. 11 attack, (one gets an idea) if that same sophistication was used with biological agents, what devastating effects this could have,” Evans said.
Making the specter of biological terror so real is the relative ease with which certain lethal agents could be made and dispersed, some experts said.
Attempts to detect and identify which pathological agent has been used in an assault is anything but easy.
Terrorists Unpredictable
Dr. David Ecker, president of Ibis Therapeutics, the biological-warfare research unit of Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc. in San Diego, said the problem starts with the terrorist’s weapon of choice.
“One of the fundamental problems is the lack of ability to predict or control what a terrorist may choose to use or how it might be engineered , they have a large menu of options to create havoc,” Ecker said.
To defend national security, the United States government has been funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to biotechnology firms and universities to explore opportunities.
Life science consultant Frost & Sullivan reported the Department of Defense spent $494.4 million on chemical and biological defense research and development last year.
Jenny Benavidez, research analyst at Frost & Sullivan in San Antonio, expects a rise in government spending on R & D; and a boost in the production of biological detectors for military use in preparation of the United States’ declared “war on terrorism.”
Several local biotechnology firms and university professors have also received government grants to spur the effort.
Transportable Device
Start-up biotechnology firm Egea, for instance, landed government grants worth $1.1 million to analyze sequences of genetic material used to identify pathological agents.
“It’s like DNA fingerprinting that distinguishes one person from another,” Evans said in simplifying terms.
The first phase has yielded useful fingerprints. Now Egea scientists are planning the second phase which aims at gleaning more sequences of DNA. The idea is to build an entire panel of tests that can be mounted on a transportable device to analyze a biological threat quickly and accurately.
“(The idea is to) use a small electronic device or a ‘dipstick’ you might wear on your clothes and which emits a signal (to alert people of the threat),” he said
Egea has joined forces with San Diego-based Nanogen, Inc., which has developed an instrument that can analyze tests for a variety of diseases. The same technology however, could potentially also be used to identify biological warfare agents.
Last year, Nanogen received a two-year, $1.6 million grant from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in San Diego to develop a microelectronic chip to do just that.
Christian Gurtner, a senior research scientist at Nanogen, said ideally the technology would detect biological agents from various sources, including blood, urine, air and water.
The beauty of biotechnology lies in its versatility, Ecker said when asked about the objectives of Ibis’ government work.
Fighting Disease
Ibis received $6.6 million in grant money from the Department of Defense to identify common binding sites to a wide range of bacteria in order to develop small molecules to fight disease.
Ibis is unique, because it is researching drug targets that have the potential to be universal , and thus, can be effective against a whole slew of bacteria, Ecker said.
“The world desperately needs new drugs that work by new mechanisms and we want to make new drugs that bacteria hasn’t seen before and therefore will not be resistant to,” he said.
Ecker declined to say how far along the firm is in its research efforts explaining he has good reason to remain elusive.
“We don’t want to tell terrorists what we are doing so they have the ability to work around it,” he said.
Two UCSD scientists meanwhile, have ideas of their own how to save lives.
William Togler and Mike Sailor, both UCSD professors of chemistry and biochemistry, say they want to put sensors in the hands of soldiers that can detect the presence of deadly chemicals such as Soman and Sarin, and track their movement.
They have developed a two-inch square box capable of detecting about 800 parts per million of the vapor.
But that still isn’t good enough, Sailor said.
Ideal Technology
“One of the tough problems with military detectors is that the ones currently in use by individual soldiers only work when approximately 10 percent of people have received a lethal dose,” he said. “We have sensors that work in parts per million but we need to get to parts per billion.”
The ideal technology would sound an alarm and tell people exactly which biological or chemical agent has been dispersed, but has not yet been done, Sailor said.
Existing mobile mass spectrometers can detect some biochemical agents, but these machines are costly, bulky and so heavy they need to be transported on trucks.
“You want something that is small and cheap and tells you everything ” Sailor said.
Benavidez said to detect and diagnose biological warfare agents is especially tough because one needs to discriminate them from naturally occurring bacteria in the environment.
“The biological incubation period (between exposure and symptoms) can be one or two days or up to six weeks,” said Dr. Leland Rickman, director of the infectious disease department at UCSD.
Chemical agents, by contrast, work faster by paralyzing one’s nervous system.
Recent reports of arrests of people who obtained licenses to transport hazardous materials and are suspected of plotting terrorist attacks using biochemical warfare agents have left many Americans terrified.
Emergency Rooms Prepared
But Rickman said local emergency rooms and laboratories are well prepared to cope with such an attack.
“Notices by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have gone out alerting emergencdepartments in the country to be aware of the potential existence of biological and chemical agents,” he said, adding the notices went out on Sept. 11 following the air attacks.
Some people reportedly are already preparing for such an event by stocking up on antibiotics such as Cipro, Zithromax and Doxycycline , used to treat anthrax , or buying gas masks to filter out lethal agents.
But Rickman finds that many of these agents “cause more panic than actual medical problems.”
There are effective antibiotics to fight a range of bacterial infections as well as antidotes to reverse the effects of deadly chemicals , including Sarin which was used by the Japanese cult Shinrikyo in an attack on the Tokyo subway six years ago.
