|US military personnel don special biohazard gear during a training exercise designed to simulate a biological weapon attack. The Department of Defense and other agencies routinely hold training sessions throughout the country as part of a domestic bioterrorism preparedness program. 'The challenge is to integrate these forces to mount an effective response under various attack scenarios," says Prof. Steven Block. Courtsey: US Navy|
Author's note: In 2007, I attended a bio-defence briefing delivered by a DARPA scientist. Since then I have always thought of DARPA as the 'bugs on the wall folks' and indeed they have successfully produced robotic bugs, but more significantly, they discussed advanced bio-defence technologies which we were not allowed to take notes on or photograph the slides. It was extremely exciting and I left with a sense of awe which DARPA tends to inspire. Six years later, they have successfully manufactured 10 million doses of vaccine within in a month. For pharmaceutical companies who invest up and over a billion per drug and which including research and development takes about ten years to bring onto the market, this was a phenomenal feat. Here we are on the threshold of major breakthroughs in vaccine research, development and production, even manufacturing technologies and the future of bio-defence couldn't look brighter. While industry of course continues to work on live attenuated vaccine production is the future a synthetic one?
Advances in synthetic vaccine manufacturing, VLP's and even 3D bio-printing will significantly change our concept of bio-defence and the manufacturing of counter-measures. The incorporation of these counter-measures will additionally change how we approach threat reduction and possibly remove many of the traditional concerns at the technical level. This could increase interest in areas which have typically been an after thought.
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