• Concerns over bioterrorism grow

    Recent concern about the growing threat of bioterrorism attacks that could strike cities throughout the world has led governments, militaries, and the biopharmaceutical industry to a heightened state of alert; in response to this threat, the United States is accelerating preparing institutions and procedures for the potential danger

  • U.S. faces growing biological threat

    An international treaty banned biological warfare in 1975, but it had no inspection and verification plan; hundreds of tons of anthrax bacteria and other pathogens were produced by the Soviet Union in violation of the treaty and only ordered destroyed in 1988 as the cold war ended; when U.S. scientists visited the anthrax burial sites, they found live spores had survived

  • SIGA wins $500 million contract to produce smallpox antiviral

    SIGA has received a $500 contract — the contract will be worth as much as $2.8 billion if the government exercises all of its options — to produce the first specialized treatment for smallpox bioterror attacks and related infections; before the company can begin work, it must fend off a legal challenge from Chimerix, Inc., an unsuccessful bidder for the contract; Chimerix claims SIGA misrepresented itself as a small business in order to win this small-business set-aside

  • Synthetic DNA makers alerted to bioterrorism threats

    Scientists have been engineering genetic sequences for decades and commercial gene sequencing has been around for years — but this year, researchers for the first time were able to design and produce cells that do not exist in nature without using pre-existing biological matter — marking the latest evolution in the rapidly advancing field of synthetic biology; the developments could pave the way for advancements in medicine, energy, and agriculture, but also could put sensitive materials in the wrong hands; it will soon be possible to recreate bacterial pathogens like smallpox — and even enhance these pathogens, making them more potent

  • BioWatch system faces technical, operational challenges

    In 2003 U.S. authorities set up a network of air samplers in major cities designed quickly to detect biological agents released in a terrorist attacks; new report says that the system, known as BioWatch, faces “serious technical and operational challenges”

  • DoD awards contract for pathogen detection

    IntegenX wins a $15 million contract to develop a pathogen detection and identification platform; the company will use a technology developed under a previous DoD contract to purify DNA from pathogen targets contained in complex matrices and present the purified material to an IntegenX library construction module

  • Sea floor organisms offer response to bioterrorism

    Two companies, with $30 million funding from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, will search for new antibiotics at the bottom of the ocean that could be used to fight bioterrorism; the companies expect to find treatments for the bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis, and other bacterial infections that could be utilized by terror groups for an attack on the United States

  • A new dual vaccine protects against both smallpox and anthrax

    A new protective vaccine against both smallpox and anthrax, two agents of bioterrorism, shows promise in animal models; the new vaccine more quickly elicited immunity and was more effective than the licensed anthrax vaccine, BioThrax, in protecting mice and rabbits against anthrax

  • Georgia county tests drive-thru shot clinic

    Decatur County, Georgia, Health Department’s drive-thru flu shot clinic was held last Friday, and more than 250 people received their vaccination; the important thing, said Sherry Hutchins, Decatur of the County Health Department, is that “The clinic—- gives the health department a chance to test our ability to swiftly, efficiently dispense medicines during a mass-exposure event like a bioterrorism attack, a disaster or an influenza pandemic”

  • Aethlon Medical says its Hemopurifier can serve in counter-bioterror applications

    Aethlon Medical says its Hemopurifier says the device is the first medical device selectively to target the removal of infectious viruses and immunosuppressive proteins from the entire circulatory system, and as such it is the most advanced and perhaps the only true broad-spectrum countermeasure against viral threats most likely to be weaponized against civilian and military populations

  • CDC says U.S. prepared to investigate urgent disease reports

    CDC recently released a new report that found that all fifty states have the ability to investigate urgent disease reports, including bioterror attacks, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week

  • Vaccine work offers protection against weaponized plague bacteria

    Plague has been used as a weapon since the Middle Ages, when armies would hurl plague-infested bodies over castle walls; more recently, the United States, Japan, and the former Soviet Union have all studied the use of Y. pestis as a biological warfare agent; new research on the immune system’s response to plague could improve efforts to vaccinate the public against the world’s oldest form of biological warfare

  • New $186.6 million contract shows anthrax threat real

    In an indication that the threat of an anthrax outbreak as a result of bioterrorism remains a major priority for the Obama administration, Maryland-based Emergent BioSolutions received a contract valued at up to $186.6 million from the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a recombinant protective antigen anthrax vaccine, which is likely to produce a more rapid response to anthrax infection than existing vaccines

  • Pentagon shifts $1 billion from WMD-defense efforts to vaccine development

    The Obama administration has shifted more than $1 billion out of its nuclear, biological, and chemical defense programs to underwrite a new White House priority on vaccine development and production to combat disease pandemics; Defense Department projects under the budget-cutting ax include the development and acquisition of biological and chemical detection systems; gear to decontaminate skin and equipment after exposure; systems to coordinate military operations in a chem-bio environment; and protective clothing for military personnel entering toxic areas, the document indicates

  • New method to protect foods from anthrax contamination

    An antibacterial enzyme found in human tears and other body fluids could be applied to certain foods for protection against intentional contamination with anthrax