Newswise — Scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) are about to begin developing a high-speed system to test the effectiveness of new, safer smallpox vaccines.
In the five-year, $5.4 million effort funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, the researchers will be adapting a new test created by the Food and Drug Administration. They will aim to take full advantage of the capabilities of a custom-built Tecan Evo 200 robot, which they say should enable them to check at least 10,000 blood samples a year for the vaccine-generated antibodies that protect against smallpox. The NIAID wants to use the system to evaluate new vaccines being developed to counter the threat that could be posed by smallpox in the hands of an enemy government or terrorist organization.
Naturally occurring smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s, and an international agreement restricts laboratory storage of the virus to two World Health Organization-monitored facilities in the United States and Russia. But infectious-disease and biodefense experts have long worried that rogue nations might have retained clandestine stocks of smallpox and that samples of the virus could have escaped into the global weapons black market during the chaos that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union.
A biological attack with smallpox, which is highly contagious and capable of killing 25 percent of those it infects, could have devastating consequences. In the United States, routine vaccinations against the virus ended in 1972. Scientists believe individuals vaccinated before then may have lost much of their protection. And while the current vaccine — a weaker relative of smallpox known as the vaccinia virus — is effective, its rare but sometimes dangerous and even fatal side effects make its large-scale use problematic. This danger is greater, experts say, for people with weakened immune systems — a population including AIDS, transplant and chemotherapy patients that has increased substantially since routine vaccinations ended.
"If it's just a threat in the mind — if you suspect but haven't confirmed a smallpox outbreak — you've got to have a safer vaccine if you're going to vaccinate a large number of people," said project leader Anthony Simmons, a UTMB professor in the departments of pediatrics, pathology, and microbiology and immunology and a member of the university's Sealy Center for Vaccine Development. "The existing vaccine is just too dangerous for that."
Simmons said that the NIAID is supporting efforts to produce genetically engineered versions of the vaccinia virus designed to induce smallpox immunity with a minimum of side effects. The agency plans to evaluate the effectiveness of those vaccines by measuring the immune response they produce in a large group of volunteers. "They're going to test them in several thousand people a year, most of them from the military, which naturally has to worry about the possibility of coming under a smallpox attack," Simmons said. "To find a way to do that, you need somebody with an extensive background in high-throughput diagnostic virology, and that's us."
The University of Texas Medical Branch at GalvestonPublic Affairs Office301 University Boulevard, Suite 3.102Galveston, Texas 77555-0144www.utmb.edu
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