Trying to stop deadly disease
BostonNow
November 26, 2007
Darry Madden
BostonNOW Correspondent
What if, by the time you noticed the tick buried into your skin, science had already protected that tick from Lyme Disease?
The disease originates in field mice, where ticks acquire it. If the mice were immunized against it, the cycle would be broken. At least that’s one theory.
Scientists at Boston University’s new National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory (NEIDL) will work to develop a vaccine for mice and a way to deliver it to them in the wild.
This is just one facet of the work that will be going on inside the $128 million, locked-down facility that’s been under way and under fire in the South End since 2003.
The project has been criticized because its mission is to work – in the heart of Boston – with the kind of lethal viruses and infectious diseases that don’t have vaccines or therapies.
The ethical and security issues have been argued and debated regularly, but the question remains, what exactly will they do in there?
Although the quasi-governmental National Institutes of Health funded 75 percent of the project, the lab will determine its own scientific agenda, said Dr. Mark Klempner, principal investigator at NEIDL.
Second, the agenda will depend on which researchers are hired to work in the lab. So far, two experts in the Ebola and Marburg viruses, Dr. Elke Muhlberger and Dr. Thomas Geisbert, and a third, Dr. Horacio Frydman, a molecular biologist who studies fruit flies and mosquitoes, have been hired.
Frydman’s work with mosquitoes, for example, could lead to breakthroughs on how to control insect transmitted pathogens, such as Eastern equine encephalitis or malaria. While the lab at Boston University won’t be handling malaria, studies have shown that mosquitoes that feed on non-malarial blood are more fertile than those who do. In other words, the disease is not good for mosquitoes, either. So scientists are working on genetically altering the digestive systems of mosquitoes to make them immune.
An ecological study in conjunction with this kind of genetic tampering is necessary, said Klempner. But it would end the toxic spraying of mosquitoes and theoretically be good for both human and insect.
The Ebola virus will be NEIDL’s first high profile arrival. The virus has been known since the 1976 outbreaks in Sudan and Zaire, but scientists understand very little about it. They don’t even know which species is carrying the virus and devastating gorillas in Africa. Ebola in humans is usually lethal and is considered a biosafety level 4 agent (the highest category) and a bioterrorism agent.
In the development of vaccines, the lab will use animal subjects. It’s a matter of law. The Food and Drug Administration won’t approve testing on humans until a vaccine has been tested on two species of animal.
The benefit of the lab’s work won’t simply be on curing people infected with Ebola or Lyme Disease, said Klempner. Many of these diseases are models for others and could be advances for medicine above and beyond infectious disease.
Pandemics since 1900
1918: Spanish Flu. Approximately 20 to 40 percent of the worldwide population became ill and more than 50 million people died. Between September 1918 and April 1919, approximately 675,000 deaths from the flu occurred in the U.S. alone.
1957: Asian Flu. Unlike the virus that caused the 1918 pandemic, the 1957 pandemic virus was quickly identified due to advances in scientific technology. Vaccine was available in limited supply by August 1957. By December 1957, the worst seemed to be over. However, during January and February 1958, there was another wave of illness hit. About 69,800 people in the U.S. died.
1968: Hong Kong Flu. The number of deaths between September 1968 and March 1969 for this pandemic was 33,800.
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
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