Overcoming Challenges To Develop Countermeasures Against Aerosolized Bioterrorism Agents

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) gives the highest priority to developing countermeasures against bioterrorism agents that are highly infective when dispersed in aerosol form. Developing drugs to prevent or treat illnesses caused by bioterrorism agents requires testing their effectiveness in animals since human clinical trials would be unethical. At the request of NIAID, the National Academies conducted a study to examine how such testing could be improved. Overcoming Challenges to Develop Countermeasures Against Aerosolized Bioterrorism Agents provides recommendations to researchers on selecting the kinds of animal models, aerosol generators, and bioterrorism agent doses that would produce conditions that most closely mimic the disease process in humans. It also urges researchers to fully document experimental parameters in the literature so that studies can be reproduced and compared. The book recommends that all unclassified data on bioterrorism agent studies-including unclassified, unpublished data from U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)-be published in the open literature. The book also calls on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to improve the process by which bioterrorism countermeasures are approved based on the results of animal studies.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) gives the highest priority to developing countermeasures against bioterrorism agents that are highly infective when dispersed in aerosol form. Developing drugs to prevent or treat illnesses caused by bioterrorism agents requires testing their effectiveness in animals since human clinical trials would be unethical. At the request of NIAID, the National Academies conducted a study to examine how such testing could be improved. Overcoming Challenges to Develop Countermeasures Against Aerosolized Bioterrorism Agents provides recommendations to researchers on selecting the kinds of animal models, aerosol generators, and bioterrorism agent doses that would produce conditions that most closely mimic the disease process in humans. It also urges researchers to fully document experimental parameters in the literature so that studies can be reproduced and compared. The book recommends that all unclassified data on bioterrorism agent studies-including unclassified, unpublished data from U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)-be published in the open literature. The book also calls on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to improve the process by which bioterrorism countermeasures are approved based on the results of animal studies.

The Transformational Medical Technologies (TMT) has been a unique component of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) medical biodefense efforts since 2006. Its mission is to advance countermeasure research and development in support of the broader goal of the DoD to protect warfighters from emerging infectious diseases and future genetically engineered biological weapons. The TMT, using advanced science and technology approaches, focused on the development of roadspectrum countermeasures that target common host and pathogen pathways or enhance the host's immune response. Many of these pathogens are lethal or cause such debilitating diseases in humans that it is ethically inappropriate to test the efficacy of these countermeasures in human volunteers. In lieu of human participants, these products may be tested in animals and approved for human use under the provisions of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s 2002 Animal Rule. The reliance on animal models for the development and licensure of medical countermeasures against biothreats is challenging for a number of reasons. The ad hoc Committee on Animal Models for Assessing Countermeasures to Bioterrorism Agents prepared a consensus report that would address the challenges stemming from developing and testing medical countermeasures against biothreat agents in animal models. Animal Models for Assessing Countermeasures to Bioterrorism Agents evaluates how well the existing TMT-employed or candidate animal models reflect the pathophysiology, clinical picture, and treatment of human disease as related to the agents of interest. The report addresses the process and/or feasibility of developing new animal models for critical biodefense research, placing emphasis on the need for a robust and expeditious validation process in terms of the FDA's Animal Rule. The report also evaluates alternatives to the use of animal models based on the premise of the Three Rs.

The term "biodiversity" or "biological diversity" describes the variety of living beings on Earth encompassing microorganisms, plants, animals, and ecosystems, such as coral reefs, forests, and deserts. In fact, it also represents a wealth of biological resources available to us. Today, instead of exploring and preserving its unmapped biodiversity, mankind has gone away from mother nature, conquering the domain through relentless exploitation. This has resulted in an ecological imbalance and thereby has posed serious threat to biodiversity. Declining biodiversity is, therefore, a concern for countless reasons. Biodiversity’s wealth of genetic information can be conserved by storing biological material from endangered species. Cell lines, gametes, and embryos are preserved so that in case a species becomes extinct or there is a need to increase the population of the species, then cloning and artificial reproductive techniques can be used to revive and reproduce the said species. The present volume discusses the biodiversity of specific animal groups, such as cnidarians and fish, as well as potential risks to and methods for conserving some of them. The following important aspects are addressed: 1. The importance of biodiversity in maintaining ecosystem balance for sustainability 2. The emerging role of biodiversity as a source of important materials, pharmaceuticals, food, and so on as such or through genetic manipulation to meet the contemporary and future challenges 3. The impact of environment degradation on biodiversity and conservation in a changing environment 4. Conventional and emerging biotechnological techniques to conserve biodiversity The book is intended for academics, scientists, and naturalists working in the fields of biology, biochemistry, biophysics, and biomedical sciences.

Divided into five parts, Microbial Food Contamination, Second Edition looks at emerging foodborne human pathogens andcomprehensively evaluates the microbiology, biochemistry, detection, risk, and threat of foodborne illness in today's global market. The first section introduces new insights into the pathogenic effect of E. coli, viral

During the last decade, national and international scientific organizations have become increasingly engaged in considering how to respond to the biosecurity implications of developments in the life sciences and in assessing trends in science and technology (S&T) relevant to biological and chemical weapons nonproliferation. The latest example is an international workshop, Trends in Science and Technology Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention, held October 31 - November 3, 2010 at the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Life Sciences and Related Fields summarizes the workshop, plenary, and breakout discussion sessions held during this convention. Given the immense diversity of current research and development, the report is only able to provide an overview of the areas of science and technology the committee believes are potentially relevant to the future of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BWC), although there is an effort to identify areas that seemed particularly ripe for further exploration and analysis. The report offers findings and conclusions organized around three fundamental and frequently cited trends in S&T that affect the scope and operation of the convention: The rapid pace of change in the life sciences and related fields; The increasing diffusion of life sciences research capacity and its applications, both internationally and beyond traditional research institutions; and The extent to which additional scientific and technical disciplines beyond biology are increasingly involved in life sciences research. The report does not make recommendations about policy options to respond to the implications of the identified trends. The choice of such responses rests with the 164 States Parties to the Convention, who must take into account multiple factors beyond the project's focus on the state of the science.

Tranimacies is a neologism that pushes and pulls together transness and animality so as to better germinate unruly, wily, perverse relationships between them, and their spawn. Through tranimacies the book aims at rethinking the linking of liberation struggles amongst former colonized peoples and lands, minoritized genders and sexualities, racially marked persons and non-human animals, and does so in a variety of geopolitical and temporal sites. This rich compendium includes original scholarship and dialogues as well as poetry, comix, bioart, and performance documentation. The composite term of tranimacies enmeshes several everyday and scholarly concepts: transgender, animal, animacy, intimacies. This edited volume’s bundle of theoretical and artistic works insists on the beating heart of embodied experiences and political pulses at the core of these concepts. The authors show that tranimacies are spread throughout what Mel Y. Chen describes as the "animacy hierarchies" that delimit zones of possibility and agency, confounding the vertical order with transversal movements. As an intervention into the burgeoning debates within and across trans, animal, critical race, and posthuman studies this publication seeks to destabilize the logic of "turns" in critical theory, and through sticky intimacies uncover how animality, race, and gender underscore the humanist production of meanings. By taking a decolonial approach (in the main, but not exclusively) the authors hope to shift debates in animal studies towards accounting for and delinking from colonial mentalities. Three poems interweave our selection of chapters, which together forge three lines of inquiry defined by a certain ethos: transhistories of the present, lessons from the bestiary, and #animatingephemera. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.

The new field of toxicogenomics presents a potentially powerful set of tools to better understand the health effects of exposures to toxicants in the environment. At the request of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Research Council assembled a committee to identify the benefits of toxicogenomics, the challenges to achieving them, and potential approaches to overcoming such challenges. The report concludes that realizing the potential of toxicogenomics to improve public health decisions will require a concerted effort to generate data, make use of existing data, and study data in new waysâ€"an effort requiring funding, interagency coordination, and data management strategies.