Medical School Wins $45 Million Research Grant

Harvard Medical School (HMS) has won a $45 million government grant to research anthrax and other bioterrorist threats.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) grant will fund the creation of the New England Center on Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, bringing together the resources of existing medical research centers in New England.

Secretary of Health and Human Service Tommy Thompson announced a total of $350 million in funds for eight new biodefense centers at a press conference last week.

Lead by HMS, the New England center will include researchers from Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, Tufts, Yale and Brown.

The centers will also focus on emerging diseases of natural origin, like SARS.

Channing Professor of Medicine Dennis L. Kasper, who will head the center, said worry about the nation’s susceptibility to terrorist attacks has increased the demand for research on deadly microscopic pathogens like anthrax.

“All you have to do is look at what’s happening in the country and the world,” he said. “There is a war that just took place in Iraq which was based on the perceived threat of bioterrorism.”

HMS was selected to lead the new center because of its strength as a nexus for talented investigators at Harvard and throughout the New England region, Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Boston Globe.

“We try to make the presence or absence of a critical mass of investigators a component in the decision-making process about where you want to place a physical facility,” Fauci said.

Kasper said the money for researching the diseases, which will be spread over five years, is long overdue. Although the only smallpox vaccine currently available was created in the 1970’s, and the anthrax vaccine was created over 50 years ago, he said that relatively few resources have been allocated for the study of such diseases.

He said that modern molecular techniques need to be applied in researching new, safer vaccines.

Recently-acquired knowledge of the entire genetic sequences of many deadly pathogens will aid tremendously in the research, he said. Scientists hope to duplicate proteins created by pathogens in order to survive, and then create drugs to inhibit those particular proteins, destroying the pathogen, Kasper said.

The NIH grant will be used to directly fund research, not the creation of new facilities.

But the Boston area also hopes to net a top-security “Level-4” research center, where more dangerous agents such as the Ebola virus could be studied. Boston University is in the running for a $1.6 billion government grant to fund the facility, which Kasper said would aid the new biodefense center in its research.

Kasper said he also foresees collaboration with the other six institutions awarded the NIH grant—Duke University, University of Chicago, University of Maryland, University of Washington, University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Washington University in St. Louis and the New York State Department of Health.

—Staff writer Nura A. Hossainzadeh can be reached at hossainz@fas.harvard.edu.