Vitrum is a project that aims to alleviate world hunger and poverty by making an accessible vaccine formulation that protects chickens around the world from Newcastle Disease. Our vaccine will theoretically have the ability to be stored at room temperature, making the vaccine easier to transport and store. World hunger is a constant and increasing problem that affects over 10% of the world’s population. But there seems to be a solution that can increase the food availability in an area, while simultaneously increasing economic stability.
The Solution
Chickens provide a reliable food source and an opportunity to increase economic stability for people around the world. Chickens are relatively low cost and low maintenance compared to other forms of livestock making them the perfect candidate to help people break this vicious cycle of hunger and poverty. Heifer International has reported that their chicken implementation project in Cambodia has increased the average monthly household income from about $107 to $358 and improved families' food provisions from 8 to 11 months.
Newcastle Disease is the Biggest Threat
Newcastle disease is an acute respiratory chicken virus that causes lethargy, diarrhea, and respiratory failure. Newcastle virus is common across the globe with recurring outbreaks usually observed in Africa and Asia. Once one chicken in the flock contracts the virus, it is almost guaranteed that the entire flock will subsequently die or have to be euthanized to stop the spread of disease. The disease is spread from avian feces, respiratory discharge, and the reuse of soil in farms that have had previous outbreaks. There has recently been an increase in the number of Newcastle disease cases in California. There is currently a vaccine that protects chickens from Newcastle disease. The most commonly used vaccine is the La Sota strain and can be administered in several different ways. Just one immunization is not enough to protect a flock from Newcastle. The flock must be given boosters of the vaccine every three months to maintain immunity.
A Thermostable Vaccine to Protect Chickens
The cold chain refers to the constant demand for a vaccine to be stored at a certain low-temperature range in order to maintain efficacy. The La Sota Vaccine must be consistently stored between 2-8° celsius. This requires specific shipping and handling parameters as vaccines are transported to many different locations before administration. Each of these locations must have a constant source of power to keep a refrigeration system functioning 24 hours a day. Mini fridges and handheld coolers are sometimes the only form of refrigeration used to keep the vaccine cool and are often unreliable. These obstacles keep the Newcastle vaccine inaccessible to farmers in resource-constrained areas and therefore leave their chicken flocks exposed to the risks of Newcastle disease. Our project aims to create a thermostable vaccine that will give greater access to people around the world who rely on chickens to support them financially and nutritionally, giving relief to people who struggle with access to food.
Purpose
The thought process, reasoning, and ethics behind our project.
Our Plan
How we collaborated with others to further improve the design of our project
Execution
How we applied knowledge from our resources to better improve the eventual delivery of our project.
Experts
California Department of Conservation
How did we learn it?
Fred Keeley, a former member of the California State Assembly, placed us in touch with David Bunn the director of the California Department of conservation to discuss potential project ideas.
What did we learn?
Dr. Thomas Boothby was first author on the paper, “Tardigrades Use Intrinsically Disordered Proteins to Survive Desiccation” and “Intrinsically Disordered Proteins and Desiccation Tolerance: Elucidating Functional and Mechanistic Underpinnings of Anhydrobiosis”. He also collaborated with Dr. Samantha Piszkiewicz on, “Protecting activity of desiccated enzymes”. We decided to contact Dr. Boothby to have a phone meeting with him as he plays a significant role in the tardigrade research community.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
Our project had originally focused around using IDPs to increase bacterial strains that are commonly used in labs against environmental stresses, however, this did not help people outside of those involved scientific community. After speaking with Mr. Bunn, we realized that these IDPs can potentially be used to relax refrigeration requirements for the NDV vaccine. We began to focus on telling the story of world hunger and how it can lead to detrimental health and environmental effects.
Dr. Thomas Boothby
How did we learn it?
Dr. Thomas Boothby was first author on the paper, “Tardigrades Use Intrinsically Disordered Proteins to Survive Desiccation” and “Intrinsically Disordered Proteins and Desiccation Tolerance: Elucidating Functional and Mechanistic Underpinnings of Anhydrobiosis”. He also collaborated with Dr. Samantha Piszkiewicz on, “Protecting activity of desiccated enzymes”. We decided to contact Dr. Boothby to have a phone meeting with him as he plays a significant role in the tardigrade research community.
Actually i grew up in Kenya and we lost power 2-3 times a week so I'd really appreciate that [heat stable NDV vaccine] -Dr. Thomas Boothby
What did we learn?
Dr. Boothby briefly spoke about his time growing up as a youth in Kenya and the challenges a lack of resources and refrigeration present. He stated that he fully understood the need for a thermostable vaccine and supported our idea.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
No project changes resulted, but the design, ethics, and purpose behind our project was further supported by his words of encouragement.
Local Community
Westside Farm and Feed Interview
How did we learn it?
We wanted to understand how our project can connect to the local community. We contacted Westside Farm and Feed, a locally owned feed and supply store in Santa Cruz, CA. Two of the owners, Gail Harlamoff and Butch Huff, met with us for an interview.
What did we learn?
The owners described their concerns and their customers’ concerns with the transportation, refrigeration, and packaging of vaccines for livestock. They explained how our heat-stable vaccine will improve farming for developed and undeveloped regions as it will improve the livelihood of livestock.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
No changes resulted, however, it ensured us that our project would meet the needs of livestock owners in our local community.
End Virulent Newcastle Facebook Page
How did we learn it?
We discovered a Facebook page dedicated to ending virulent Newcastle disease in Southern California. The purpose of this page is to educate its members about virulent Newcastle disease based on information from the CDFA. The members of this page update each other about Newcastle outbreaks and quarantines, kill zones, eradication goals, and more through information provided by the CDFA.
What did we learn?
We wrote a post for this Facebook group that described the main goal of our project. We encouraged the members to tell us their experiences with Newcastle and why a heat-stable Newcastle disease vaccine would be beneficial to them. One of the members told us that the CDFA does not endorse vaccination, but veterinarians and biologists recommend it. Through personal communications with the community, we found that the USDA does not inform those with backyard flocks about vaccination because they use non-industrial flocks as an indicator for the spread of Newcastle. Therefore, manufacturers are not required to vaccinate their chickens unless an outbreak of Newcastle occurs near their factory. From this outreach effort, we connected to an online community that is affected by Newcastle who educated our team about the CDFA and USDA regulations for vaccinating chickens.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
Through this connection, we realized we had to better acknowledge the CDFA and USDA vaccination regulations as our research progressed. We could not dismiss the fact that the government does not endorse vaccination of backyard and non-commercial chickens.
Santa Cruz County Fair
How did we learn it?
As visitors roamed through the Poultry Show at the Santa Cruz County Fair, they passed by our booth where we would start conversations that related the chickens among them with Newcastle disease. We also spoke with two organizers from the poultry barn, Terry Reeder and June.
What did we learn?
Through our conversations, we learned that many people who own chickens did not know what Newcastle disease was. Most of the visitors were unaware that the Poultry Show at the Santa Cruz County Fair was almost canceled due to the outbreak of Newcastle in Southern California. June told us that she encountered great difficulty finding owners that were willing to showcase their chickens at the poultry barn. While these owners were far from the NDV quarantine zone in Southern California, they still feared The visitors were surprised to learn that Southern California is under quarantine for this disease. We introduced visitors to the basic recommendations for approaching poultry diseases and isolation/quarantine of poultry based on information provided by the UC Davis Veterinary Medicine School.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
After tabling at the Poultry Show, we realized we had to start talking about the recommended methods to prevent poultry diseases. We were informing people of Newcastle Disease, the symptoms, how it is spread, how it affects chickens, etc. However, we needed to include information on the current methods of protecting poultry.
...it should be stressed that disease is spread by direct contact from bird-to-bird, on clothing, automobile/truck tires, and the like. -Terry Reeder, Santa Cruz Poultry Department
How did we learn it?
Since we were having difficulty establishing a direct line with farmers in lower-middle income countries, we turned towards social media and the internet. We found an online forum board called “Nairaland Forum” that consists of information about varying topics. The forum board has a significant amount of users based in Nigeria. We found a post from someone addressing fellow farmers about the unreliable use of foreign NDV vaccines and their viability.
What did we learn?
We learned that the vaccine that is administered from overseas is usually dead on arrival and that most foreign vaccines should not be used because of this reason. The forum alerts the people of Nigeria with farms to not buy vaccines if the tablet has turned powdered, yellow in color, or the bottle is half-broken, then the vaccine is dead. This is due to the inability to keep the vaccines at a cold temperature and the careless marketers who are only interested in making money and not keeping the vaccine cold.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
We found out that many vaccines are dead on arrival due to the lack of care from distributors and resources. This forum solidified our concept about the viability of the cold chain.
Nonprofit Organizations
Heifer International
How did we learn it?
We wanted to learn more about the actual administration of chickens to rural communities, and the maintenance of the cold chain during the process. Our team reached out to WorldBuilders, a nonprofit dedicated to humanitarian efforts, which directed us to a representative at Heifer International who set up a phone call with us and the Director of Program and Livestock Technology, Dilip Bhandari.
If you are able to make a heat stable LaSota vaccine and it proves useful, it will have a lot of benefits to those farmers that are in the last mile of the community -Dilip Bhandari
We also asked Dilip “what is the biggest benefit for communities receiving Heifer’s help?” He responded stating: “There are two. One is increasing the income of farmers and improving the nutrition of the families. It is easy to raise them and they don’t need to invest a lot of money...when we do this in a bigger community with a bigger flock size, we see a big change. For example in Cambodia, about 35,000 households, more than 200,000 people, are all doing poultry. They are selling a lot of local chicken and penetrating the bigger market. They have established cooperatives and processing units and able to sell them to supermarkets. In Cambodia they were making $1200 per year per household through poultry, now it has gone to $4500 a year per family. On the nutrition side, it is a good source of protein from eggs and meat and it affects children's ability to develop and their cognitive growth.”
What did we learn?
We learned about the logistics and execution of the international programs that Heifer has created to help people in developing countries obtain financial stability, food, and consistent nutrition for themselves and their community. This includes the shipment of livestock to communities that need it and training for members of those communities to administer vaccines to local farms. Some of their most successful programs include those in Cambodia, which according to Heifer’s Director of Program and Livestock Technology, Dilip Bhandari, said to be “able to reduce mortality in chickens from 60%-57%. We have also seen that the number of flock size in a farm has gone up from 5-6 chickens to about 30 in the case of India. In Cambodia, it has gone from 30-300. This is due to the mitigation of cold chain and vaccine.”
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
Our team learned that our project is a very real issue that could help thousands of people improve their livestock maintenance. We also learned that the impacts go beyond helping to solve hunger around the world, but can provide economic stability and empower those underrepresented in their community.
Palo Alto Medical Foundation
How did we learn it?
Got in touch with President of Palo Alto Medical Foundation Santa Cruz at Sutter Health. The Palo Alto medical foundation is a not-for-profit organization meaning they reinvest back into the community to continue to deliver high quality medical care to low income patients in Northern California.
What did we learn?
We learned that even hospitals can feel the effect of the demand for constant refrigeration of the drugs that they keep in their clinical sites. The president of PAMF Santa Cruz informed our team:
We have spent countless capital dollars and operational time ensuring that all vaccine storage units keep meticulously within manufacturers' narrow temp storage guidelines. -Lawrence DeGhetaldi MD.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
We learned that a heat stable vaccine could help hospitals save money, and that our project has the potential to be applied everywhere.
Dr. Thomas Boothby
How did we learn it?
Dr. Thomas Boothby was first author on the paper, “Tardigrades Use Intrinsically Disordered Proteins to Survive Desiccation” and “Intrinsically Disordered Proteins and Desiccation Tolerance: Elucidating Functional and Mechanistic Underpinnings of Anhydrobiosis”. He also collaborated with Dr. Samantha Piszkiewicz on, “Protecting activity of desiccated enzymes”. We decided to contact Dr. Boothby as he plays a significant role in the tardigrade research community.
What did we learn?
We came across Dr. Boothby’s paper, “Tardigrades Use Intrinsically Disordered Proteins to Survive Desiccation” when researching osmoprotectants. We found that tardigrades upregulate tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered proteins when subjected to desiccation. The paper further talked about the ability of IDP’s to confer tolerance against desiccation when expressed in heterologous systems such as E. coli or S. cerevisiae. Another paper he authored, “Intrinsically Disordered Proteins and Desiccation Tolerance: Elucidating Functional and Mechanistic Underpinnings of Anhydrobiosis” taught us about IDPs that weren’t specific to tardigrades. This paper spoke about the ability of organisms that don’t produce trehalose to be tolerant of desiccation through mediation of IDPs.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
This information was the first in-depth knowledge we gained about the physical and mechanistic properties of IDPS that would help us move our project forward in the hopes of creating a thermostable vaccine for NDV.
Pamela Silver Lab
How did we learn it?
Dr. Pamela Silver came and generously hosted a Q&A with our team. During this time, she spoke about tardigrades and the potential use of IDPs in humans for biostasis. She set up a meeting for us with Dr. Roger Chang, the associate lab director in the Pamela Silver Lab at Harvard Medical school. He spoke about the structural characteristics of IDPs. We wanted to begin a dialogue with various experts in the field of IDPs to assess the viability and value our project would bring to the world and the scientific community.
For what you're proposing in stabilizing a specific Vaccine with a very specific target...it’s a challenge...and though I cannot guarantee success it seems like a worthwhile project to attempt. -Roger Chang
What did we learn?
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) have the ability to confer tolerance to a number of different stresses. Assessing the ability of tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered proteins (TDPs) to withstand heat is a good avenue to explore for our intent to confer thermostability for the NDV vaccine. IDPs cannot be crystallized or investigated in the same manner as well structured globular proteins due to their high composition of intrinsically-disordered regions. This does not mean that they don’t adopt any sort of structure to perform their function. TDPs are observed to form secondary structures through lyophilization however they have been seen to form these same structures without lyophilization through physical and material characterization. There are 3 classes of TDPs: cytosolic, mitochondrial, and secreted. Each class title relates to where these proteins are localized within the tardigrade. The structure of secreted TDP’s is vastly different than the other two classes. Even if we don’t achieve our exact goal, we are guaranteed to push the boundaries of what is understood about IDPs which is valuable in and of itself. The Silver Lab also provided us with numerous plasmids that each contained a different IDP with an N-terminal FLAG purification tag, and helped us troubleshoot our protein expression.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
Speaking with Roger ensured us that our project was a worthwhile pursuit. It allowed us to finalize our project choice and move forward with further research and lab work. We decided to work on this project in a manner that benefits and conveys information to those in resource-constrained areas and the science community. We no longer needed to use cloning methods to create plasmids containing our IDPs of interest as we were given plasmids containing our IDPs. We only needed to do site-directed-mutagenesis to replace the FLAG-tag with a 6xHis-tag for purification purposes.
Dr. Samantha Piszkiewicz
How did we learn it?
Dr. Samantha Piszkiewicz was first author of papers “Protecting enzymes from stress-induced inactivation” and “Protecting activity of desiccated enzymes”. She also collaborated with Dr. Thomas Boothby on “Tardigrades use intrinsically disordered proteins to survive desiccation”. All these papers had the common theme of providing protection against environmental stresses and intrinsically disordered proteins. We decided to contact Dr. Piszkiewicz as she had considerable experience using our proteins of interest in a similar manner. She also worked in the Pielak lab.
What did we learn?
Dr. Piszkiewicz gave us information on the lyophilization protocol she used when protecting the test enzymes lactate dehydrogenase and lipoprotein lipase against desiccation-, freezing-, and lyophilization‐induced deactivation with a CAHS (cytosolic-abundant heat shock) protein. She spoke about potential obstacles we would face if we tried to concentrate our proteins as there is a potential for excessive gelation. We were directed to a webinar she hosted where her lab shared their observations on the gelation of TDPs. The current prevailing model for TDPs are two globular domains attached by region characterized by intrinsic disorder. This can be thought of as “two balls on a string”. When a mixture of these TDPs are desiccated, they begin to gel and form a structure that can be thought of as a “fruit jello”. The globular domains in this gel can be thought of as the “fruit pieces” while the intrinsically disordered regions are viewed as the “jello”.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
We were now aware to look out for excessive gellation that could lead to clogs when we purify our proteins of interest. At the time of our contact, Dr. Piszkiewicz had defended her thesis and left the Pielak Lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC), she directed us to contact Candice Crilly. Candice continued Dr. Piszkiewicz’s work on tardigrade proteins. We were able to receive pET-28b(+) plasmids containing IDPs we could potentially use from the Pielak Lab. This saved us time we would have spent on cloning methods to assemble our plasmids.
United States National Poultry Research Center
How did we learn it?
We were placed in touch with David Suarez, a research leader in the Exotic and Emerging Avian Viral Disease Research Unit at the US National Poultry Research Center, through a series of emails. This is a division of the Agricultural Research Service which is a division of the United States Department of Agriculture.
What did we learn?
We were given protocols for a hemagglutination assay and plaque assay that the USDA uses to assess NDV. We were provided with four papers to read about the nature of Newcastle virus. We learned that the USDA and the United States National Poultry Research Center uses the LaSota strain of the vaccine for vaccinations.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
We were able to use the hemagglutination assay and plaque assay protocols to assess the viability of our NDV vaccine. Our choice to work with the LaSota strain was further supported by the statements that the USDA primarily uses this vaccine.
Dr. Rodrigo Gallardo
UC Davis Vet School
How did we learn it?
David Bunn and David Suarez put us in touch with Dr. Rodrigo Gallardo, Associate Professor in Population, Health & Reproduction at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
What did we learn?
Dr. Gallardo sat on the review board for our Biological Use Authorization (BUA). He’s highly active in NDV research and evaluated our protocols for plaque assays and hemagglutination assays. We were also provided with a qPCR protocol and sequences of probes they use to assess the NDV vaccine. He gave us posters and informational materials from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine that we used in conjunction with our own materials when we did public engagement and outreach. We also learned that the most needed vaccines that would greatly benefit from an improvement in thermostability are MMR and influenza.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
We were able to supplement our own outreach and education materials with the ones provided by the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Gallardo helped us in securing our BUA so that we could begin working with the virus. We learned that our project has the potential to eventually be expanded to protect the MMR and influenza vaccines.
Heifer International
How did we learn it?
Jackie Finch, Director of Philanthropy at Heifer International, set up a phone call with us and the Director of Program and Livestock Technology, Dilip Bhandari.
What did we learn?
Scientists partnered with Heifer International have decided that the LaSota strain of Newcastle Disease vaccine is best compared to other strains. They use this strain in all of their livestock implementation programs involving chickens.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
No project changes resulted, but we were now certain that the lentogenic LaSota strain of Newcastle Disease vaccine was the appropriate strain to test our thermostability protection on. This is due to its current-day application in local areas that our project is focused on.
Dr. Phil Berman
How did we learn it?
• We met with Dr. Berman, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Biomolecular Engineering at our university. We decided to reach out to him as he previously worked at Genentech with recombinant proteins and vaccines to prevent Herpes Simplex Virus and AIDS. He is best known for his extensive work on developing an HIV vaccine.
What did we learn?
• Dr. Berman told us that while vaccines benefit the lives of many, they are often overlooked by major pharmaceutical companies due to their low profitability. This is partly due to the concept if a vaccine works too well, then there will no longer be a need for it. We also learned that we should state we’re engineering a vaccine formulation not a vaccine, as increasing the thermostability of the virus could increase rates of infection.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
• We reevaluated our approach for entrepreneurship and looked towards the potential profitability our project has in decreasing reliance on the cold chain. Our focus in entrepreneurship was broadened from becoming a vaccine manufacturer to recognizing the different areas our method could be applied to. By stating that we were creating a vaccine formulation as opposed to a vaccine, we avoided any miscommunication with those we reached out to.
Bioethics (BME 80G)
How did we learn it?
• Bioethics is a course offered at UCSC. It’s students are asked to evaluate the iGEM project and address any concerns or problems with the project in regards to ethics. The above points were compiled from essays that students in the class wrote to address potential problems with our project.
• We can’t say the project will solve the problem of low vaccination rates in developing countries since we can’t assume that availability is the sole underlying cause.
• Our project may put local vaccine producers out of business if large multinational companies use our methods to transport their vaccines.
○ This is a problem since many vaccines are ineffective when they aren’t formulated for specific variations of the disease found in particular geographical areas.
○ Local vaccine producers keep the country’s educated population in the country by providing them with high paying biotechnology jobs.
○ Local companies are more effective than multinational companies because they are able to work locally and respond to new virus strains quickly.
○ Vaccine manufacturers in developing countries can better support the global supply of vaccines by addressing local government and regional needs.
○ Developing countries are non-premium markets that are not well supported by multinational corporations.
What did we learn?
We learned about the implications and drawbacks our project could potentially have if it succeeds. There are a few unintended consequences that the success of our project could cause:
• Giving large multinational companies the ability to easily transport their project at lower costs could promote organizations like WHO to increase reliance on them. Developing countries will be forced to rely on distant companies that don’t have a vested interested in local public health. The iGEM project does not have interests of local producers in mind.
The iGEM project will indirectly reduce economic and infrastructure development in developing nations. Public health in these communities will certainly decrease when being forced to rely on imports.
• The iGEM project will indirectly reduce economic and infrastructure development in developing nations. Public health in these communities will certainly decrease when being forced to rely on imports.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
In order to implement our project in resource-constrained areas, we began to consider what affected vaccination rates other than availability. We learned that education and pricing of vaccines plays a vital role in vaccine implementation by consumers. When executing our project, we aim to take a three-pronged approach where:
1.) Vaccine availability is improved by our project
2.) Education is implemented alongside vaccine distribution
3.) Pricing of the vaccine is at a level where all are able to have access to it
We must also be mindful that our project does not negatively impact local vaccine manufacturers. This can be resolved by working with vaccine manufacturers of all sizes and locations rather than focusing on large companies with more resources. This way, there is no reliance on imported vaccines and manufacturers have the ability to be self-sufficient.
Professor Matthew Sparke
How did we learn it?
We reached out to Matthew Sparke, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at UC Santa Cruz, who specializes in global health research. He has helped create and direct new undergraduate programs in global health and integrated social sciences. He gave us reading in political virology and the lessons learned when implementing small scale poultry farming.
What did we learn?
We learned more about the effect new agricultural regimes can affect nutrition of community. We were told by Professor Sparke to look “at Tanzania as a place where there has been a push by global health NGOs to help people living with HIV and other vulnerable populations to develop new nutritional and economic options by investing in smallholder chicken farming, partly for meat, but mainly for eggs.”
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
We grew a better understanding of the different countries that are affected by Newcastle. We also learned that women’s role in chicken farming is widespread, but their control of the revenue made after can be limited. We recognize that farming can be an amazing tool for women to obtain freedom and financial stability. However, this is not the case in many communities and stems from a deeper social issue and must guarantee that women are the ones implementing the decision making and ownership of the flock. For example, “Women owned two-thirds of birds in Cote d'Ivoire and Tanzania and about 40% in Burkina Faso and Senegal. However, women's share of household poultry holdings did not generally increase over the course of the project. Moreover, women's involvement in decision making on the use of any resulting revenues proved hard to increase in Cote d'Ivoire and Tanzania. In Tanzania, the final monitoring survey showed that in only 21% and 49% of surveyed households did women have full or partial control over the revenues resulting from chicken sales, respectively." [Nordhagen et al]
How did we learn it?
Early on in our project, we were placed in touch with Dr. Bob Goldstein by Susan Strome, Department Chair of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at our university. Dr. Bob Goldstein has done extensive research on tardigrades.
What did we learn?
Dr. Goldstein was happy to help, but he left all work on the CAHS proteins to his former postdoc, Thomas Boothby. He stated that we shared a common interest in protecting vaccines and directed us to the Gary Pielak lab at the University of North Carolina where Thomas Boothby did his second postdoc. Their lab has been working towards determining toxicity and immunogenicity of these proteins for that purpose. We were also given an abstract, “Toxicity and Immunogenicity of a Tardigrade Cytosolic Abundant Heat Soluble Protein” by Harrison James Esterly et. al, that assessed the toxicity and immunogenicity of CAHS D (CAHS 94205) when injected in mice at varying concentrations. No changes in weight or behavior were observed during the 28-day monitoring period in this study. A larger toxicity study to study immunogenicity is currently underway.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
We initiated contact with Thomas to learn more about our IDPs of interest. We became more confident on the potential of our project to be scaled to human vaccines as the immunogenicity studies in mice appear hopeful. This could prove highly useful for conferring thermostability in the MMR and or influenza vaccine.
Dr. Tom Inglesby
Met to discuss potential misuse of our project
How did we learn it?
We emailed Dr. Tom Inglesby, Director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Center for Health Security focuses on protecting the general public’s health from the consequences of epidemics and disasters. Dr. Inglesby's work is internationally recognized in the fields of public health preparedness, pandemic and emerging infectious disease, and prevention of and response to biological threats. We wanted to work with an expert to learn more about how our project and increasing thermostability could be used to cause harm.
What did we learn?
Dr. Inglesby told us about a framework that was built to evaluate new technologies for biodefense risks from the National Academies of Sciences Report: “BioDefense in an Age of Synthetic Biology”. He stated that one of the components in the framework is to analyze a technology’s ability to remove an existing bottleneck or barrier towards weaponization. In the case of this component, it seems that there are currently other technologies that would achieve the same end goal of increasing the thermostability of a harmful agent.
What project changes resulted (step-by-step)?
We became mindful about the potential our project has to be used for purposes other than intended. Further evaluation and acknowledgment was done about the dual-use aspects of our work. A potential discussion can be had about government oversight on IDPs and their potential use to weaponize agents, but this must then be further applied to other molecules, such as trehalose, that can be used to increase thermostability in other systems.
References
1.) Graziano da Silva, Jose, et al. “Global Hunger Continues to Rise.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 11 Sept. 2018, www.who.int/news-room/detail/11-09-2018-global-hunger-continues-to-rise---new-un-report-says.
3.) COSGROVE, JACLYN. “To Stop a Virus, California Has Euthanized More than 1.2 Million Birds. Is It Reckless or Necessary?” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 7 June 2019, www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-virulent-newcastle-disease-outbreak-in-southern-california-20190607-story.html.
4.) Actman, Jani. “Bushmeat: How Wild Meat Can Be a Threat to Wildlife and Human Health.” Bushmeat, Explained, 19 June 2019, www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reference/bushmeat-explained/.
