Responding to bioterror threat
by Liz Kowalczyk, Globe Staff
The Boston Globe - Friday, February 14, 2003
N. E. medical centers vie for US treatment, vaccine study grants
The Harvard teaching hospitals and New England's medical schools have requested $4 million to $6 million from the federal government to open a regional biodefense research and teaching center, part of a widespread effort by the medical community to capture fast-growingdollars to fight bioterrorism.
Academic medical centers and medical schools across the United States are rapidly developing proposals for biodefense research, a portion of the National Institutes of Health budget that could double next year to $1.6 billion, not including money for new buildings. Growth in the rest of the NIH research budget for diseases from cancer to heart disease in expected to slow to 4 percent starting in July.
"The research community is very much like any other kind of business: If you have a lot of incentives people will turn innovation toward the problem," said Dr. Alan Ezekowitz, chief of pediatrics at MassGeneral Hospital for Children. "There is also a large sense people have, and I feel this personally, that if we have expertise we should turn our attention toward these problems. It's a national and international crisis."
As the Bush administration warns Americans about the growing threat of terrorism, medical schools and teaching hospitals are requesting federal dollars for a unprecedented range of biodefense research - a shift in priorities that also is raising concerns about whether other crucial medical research projects will be neglected.
The Harvard group, which submitted its request last month, wants to establish a regional laboratory located in Boston's Longwood Medical and Academic area that would pay for individual projects to develop vaccines and treatments against agents of bioterrorism. The money also would allow Harvard to expand its lab where researchers work with dangerous organisms. And the center would help develop careers of researchers who want to redirect their efforts away from traditional medical arenas and toward biodefense.
"We have a lot of scientific talent that can readily perform the kinds of studies that need to be done," said Dr. Dennis Kasper, executive dean for academic programs at Harvard Medical School, who led the grant proposal. "The time frame until we actually see something for the public is hard to know. We hope to have some useful products coming out within two years. But we still need to figure out who will make them, who will accept liability, and how we'll test them."
Kasper expects a decision by summer, but competition is fierce. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will award four grants for regional labs, but has received more than a dozen applications. Across the country, requests for money have ranged from several hundred thousand dollars to more than $1 billion. Boston University Medical Center is seeking federal grants amounting to as much as $1.6 billion to build and run one of the nation's most sophisticated and high-security biodefense research laboratories, where scientists hunt for treatments and vaccines against potentially lethal agents ranging from smallpox to plague to anthrax.
The hospital's request is for a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory - the most secure category of labs, reserved for working with the deadliest germs and viruses known. The Harvard group's lab would be Biosafety Level 3.
West Coast hospitals and medical schools, led by the University of California at Davis, are requesting $50 million to build a centr for biodefense research. The University of California at San Francisco within the next month will request a large grant from the NIH to research the impact of terrorism on the nation's mental health and how best to treat large-scale post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. And then there are countless smaller requests, including a $250,000 award Ezekowitz's research group won to study how flies' immune systems recognize and respond to anthrax.
He said that most researchers in infectious diseases, immunology, and cellular biology hve the scientific knowledge to move into biodefense research - and many are adding on that area to their regular work. His lab studies how flie's immune systems respond to routine infectious agents, and recently expanded to include anthrax. Ezekowitz's group, the laboratory of developmental immunology at Mass General, can study only how flies respond to the outer coatings of anthrax spores, minus the toxins inside. To work withlive anthrax, the group needs access to a Biosafety Level 3 or Level 4 lab.
With growth in the general NIH budget slowing after 5 years of record increases, researchers in heart disease, cancer, and other areas with less connection to biodefense are concerned about federal officials neglecting their areas. Over the past five years, the NIH budget doubles to nearly $27 billion and Boston benefited more than any other city. The city's universities, hospitals, and businesses receive more than $1 billion a year in NIH grants. And the five independent hospitals in the nation that receive the most NIH money are all in Boston. Any reduction in NIH money for traditional areas of medical research could have an impact on the city - unless institutions move quickly to capture their share of biodefense funds.
"This is an impact we're very concerned about," said Dr. George Thibault, vice president of Partners HealthCare, a hospital network headed by Mass. General and Brigham & Women's Hospital. "We may not be able to generate new research in areas where there's just about to be a breakthrough. And if a war went on for a long time, it could have an impact on the rate of future discoveries."
Liz Kowalczyk can be reached at kowalczyk@globe.com