With the threats of anthrax, avian flu and the SARS virus making headline news in recent years, researchers at Duke are now targeting biodefense and emerging infectious diseases in order to better prepare the country in the case of another possible biological threat.

Scientists at Duke University Medical Center and the Global Health Research Building, which opened in February, are researching biological mechanisms that lay the groundwork for developing better drugs and defense products.

The GHRB is the first of 13 regional biocontainment laboratories to open, and includes areas of research in influenza vaccines and plague, said Dr. Richard Frothingham, director of the building and associate professor of medicine in infectious diseases.

"The goal of our plague research has been to understand how plague harms the mammalian host and how the person defends against it," Frothingham said.

The GHRB's goal of collaboration with other universities in the southeast region such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is beneficial to the research, said Elizabeth Ramsburg, an assistant research professor at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, who investigates influenza vaccines.

"We're really focusing on developing vaccine platforms that could be used for diseases that we know about now or could emerge in the future," she said. "One goal of the large collaborative project [with other universities] is to have a bank of vaccine vectors that we could go to if something like that happened and decide which vector is right for which pathogen."

Recently, genomics researchers at DUMC have produced a new blood test that detects levels of radiation exposure in a rapid and efficient way-a useful tool in the event of a large-scale crisis such as a terrorist attack.

"Duke is becoming a leading research institution in the area of biodefense and we're very excited about the potential utility of this test that we've developed for radiation," said Senior Study Investigator Dr. John Chute, an associate professor of medicine in the Duke Adult Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplant Program.

Funded by a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health, the research produced a genomic-based assay that was tested in human patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation that exposed them to lethal doses of radiation, said Joseph Nevins, professor of molecular genetics at the University's Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.

The assay is useful for detecting exposure to nuclear devices and "dirty bombs"-conventional bombs that disperse radiation, Nevins said.

"The real issue is to identify those individuals that could benefit from treatment," he said, explaining that the medical system would be exhausted if everyone with minor to lethal exposure to radiation tried to seek treatment after an attack.

The assay is used to measure changes in gene expression in white blood cells and identify 20 to 25 genes that are core genes of radiation, Chute said. He added that the technology used to read the assays can turn around analysis within 12 hours.

The concept of using gene expression to detect levels of radiation exposure may be useful in producing other biodefense mechanisms, Nevins said.

"Changes within blood cells in principle can be applied in other contexts like infectious agents and anthrax exposure," he said.