A science blog with Eric Berger

Interview: How vulnerable is the U.S. to biological threats?


In June the Texas A&M System won a huge federal contract to become one of the nation’s major hubs of vaccine production and bioterror preparedness. Over an expected lifetime of 25 years the federal contract to create a Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing is likely worth $1.5 to $2 billion.

The centers are part of a federal plan to improve preparedness that is being led by the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Its director, Robin Robinson, will visit Texas A&M on Monday and I spoke with him in advance of his visit. Here’s the interview, in full:


Q. What is the purpose of your visit to Texas on Monday?

A. In June, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius announced that Texas A & M University is one of three new Centers around the country that will be receiving funding to build or renovate facilities to develop and manufacture medical countermeasures, such as vaccines and medicines used to protect people’s health in an emergency. The center, as a public-private partnership, will enhance the nation’s emergency preparedness against emerging infectious diseases, including pandemic influenza, and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. I will be in College Station to join Sen. Hutchinson and university and state and local dignitaries in the dedication of the new center Centers at Texas A&M.

Q. Texas A&M does not have a long history with human vaccines. What was the strength of their application to become such a center?

A. Texas A&M created a consortium with several of the world’s best pharmaceutical companies including GlaxoSmithKline and Lonza and some of the most innovative local companies including Caliber Biotherapeutics to provide a formidable team that can make vaccines quickly in a public health emergency and help companies in need to develop and manufacture their vaccines on a routine basis.

Q. How vulnerable would the United States have been had the pandemic H1N1 been more virulent?

A. Had the 2009 H1N1 pandemic been more severe, then we would have executed contingency plans that included medical countermeasures and other social distancing mitigation measures. The contingent medical countermeasure plans included manufacturing and usage of flu vaccines formulated with adjuvants. This dose sparing technology provides a way to extend a limited vaccine supply to more people. Additionally, contingencies included the distribution of the unused stockpile of flu antiviral drugs to treat patients with influenza.

Q. How will the new centers being created address this vulnerability?

A. These centers, all based in the U.S., will produce and make available pandemic influenza vaccines sooner than in 2009 due to newer vaccine and flexible manufacturing technologies. Nearly 90% of the pandemic influenza vaccine needs will be provided domestically utilizing these new Centers and current flu vaccine manufacturers in the U.S.

Q. Would this large outlay of federal funds have been possible had the H1N1 pandemic not occurred?

A. Following the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic, recognizing the challenges that arose during the Pandemic, Secretary Sebelius ask the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response to do a comprehensive review of the medical countermeasure enterprise highlighting the need for a modernized countermeasure production process. The review found that the U.S. must more quickly develop manufacturing processes that can be used for multiple medications or vaccines rather than processes that can be used to produce only one type of countermeasure. The review made clear that the federal government must do a better job nurturing discoveries in their earliest stages to push them to greater maturity. The Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development are one of the five major initiatives recommended in the Secretary’s Medical Countermeasure Review in 2010.

Q. Should people be more concerned about deliberate biological attacks or naturally occurring disease outbreaks?

A. Mother Nature is always cooking up new pathogens as exemplified by the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 and the SARS epidemic in 2003. Biological, chemical, and radiological threats continue to be concerns to us today.

Q. You came to HHS in 2004 to establish a Manhattan-like program for biological countermeasures. With these three new centers do you believe you have accomplished that?

A. When the Centers are actually making vaccine and helping other companies, then I will take a breath.

Q. Which is the better movie: 28 Days Later or Outbreak? Or do you have another favorite in the biological hazards genre?

A. The Andromeda Strain was a very good movie that depicted more realistically the evolution of an unknown pathogen and how humankind would deal with the spread of a new infectious disease.

Categories: Biology, Health
Eric Berger

8 Responses

  1. Bcreekski says:

    You should interview Dr. Peter Hotez in Houston who is a world authority on tropical diseases and vaccines. He and his associates have actually been making vaccines which has not been done in College Station to date. Dr. Hotez and the A&M project are great additions to Texas.

  2. juatbob says:

    officially 18,000 died world wide in the 2009 “pandemic”. how many die from the flu every year.
    while i have no problem with the center in aggie land, was this just another “world coming to an end” story?

    • JohnD says:

      18,000 died from H1N1 in the pandemic, in addition to the regular death toll (which turns out to be very hard to estimate accurately). Given that usually only about 3,000 people die each year from H1N1 and that the 1918 pandemic was an H1N1 type, I’d say that the concern was legitimate.

  3. Ed C says:

    “Opossum protein neutralizes nearly all poisons, could have benefits for humans”

    “Opossums may someday provide an antidote to nearly all forms of poison, including everything from snakebites to ricin.”

    “The Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins has found that the American opossum produces a protein known as Lethal Toxin-Neutralizing Factor (LTNF). And as the Boing Boing blog points out, the LTNF protein is exactly what it sounds like, seeking out otherwise lethal poisons that have entered an opossum’s body and neutralizing them.”
    Who would have thought a possum might one day cure ricin poisoning, botulinum, and envenomation caused by animals, plants and bacteria in general.

    And people consider them pests.

  4. JohnD says:


    You have to give him this: the man knows his euphemisms. Translated from the med-speak, his statement is this “if bad came to worse, we would have created ‘no-go’ areas and restricted travel to prevent the spread of the disease, just as they did during the 1918 outbreak”.

    And I agree with him that the Andromeda Strain was a better movie than either 28 Days Later or Outbreak. But Resident Evil is way more fun…

    • Keith says:

      And did you know that the Church scene was shot in Shafter Tx, just south of Marfa.
      Loved the movie…a bit campy but the science was a bit more realistic then modern doom and gloom movies.

    • JohnD says:

      I did not know that. Coolness!

  5. bill mcwilliams says:

    The corporate welfare queens at Homeland Security etc. thank you for helping
    to keep the public scared enough that no one in Congress will dare to cut our
    corporate welfare budget.