The Russian and U.S. centers responsible for housing the world’s only known samples of smallpox are preparing to intensify their research efforts to develop smallpox defenses, Science magazine reported Friday (see GSN, March 15).

Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will devote one of its two maximum-containment laboratories exclusively to smallpox research starting at the end of this month.  The research will continue “for as long as it takes,” said James LeDuc, who heads the studies.

“That’s a huge commitment,” said Jonathan Tucker, a smallpox expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

The Russian State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector (see related GSN story, today), is also preparing to launch a three-year smallpox program with Russian and U.S. funding.

The two centers are working to develop modern diagnostics, safer vaccines and new drugs to fight smallpox in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and heightened fears that terrorists could obtain and use smallpox as a biological weapon. 

Researchers are also speeding up efforts to complete as much research as possible before the international community could someday order the destruction of the remaining two live smallpox virus stores.  The World Health Organization decided earlier this year to extend the destruction deadline for three additional years, rather than order its destruction at the end of 2002 (see GSN, Jan. 18).

“It’s clear we cannot destroy the virus at this stage,” said Antonio Alcami, a mousepox expert at the Cambridge University and a WHO adviser.

The World Health Assembly must vote on the WHO decision in May, and although it is expected to approve the extension, it could theoretically vote to continue with destruction at the end of this year.

Debate

China and a few other countries that oppose the restricted U.S. and Russian possession of the smallpox samples are expected to state their preference for destroying the samples at the assembly meeting.

The CDC has not shown much enthusiasm for keeping its smallpox stocks, perhaps mostly due to the large amount of maximum-security space it requires, according to Science.

“We were told to do it,” said LeDuc, “and we’re doing it to the best of our ability” (Enserink/Stone, Science, March 15).

There are also critics in the United States, many of whom helped eliminate smallpox in the wild, who believe the samples should be destroyed to rid the world of the disease.  Alfred Sommer, who helped eliminate the disease, argues that developing new antiviral drugs to fight smallpox is unlikely to happen soon and that the world needs to emphasize that keeping smallpox stocks is immoral. 

“The world would be a much safer place if we all decided we want to get rid of it, instead of playing with it,” Sommer said.

Other scientists, such as virologist Peter Jahrling of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, have said they need time to study the virus to develop antiviral drugs and vaccines that do not endanger people with weak immune systems (see GSN, Nov. 21, 2001).

Those who support keeping the virus samples appear to be winning the argument in the political sphere, according to Science.  The Sept. 11 attacks “muted the criticism of the research pretty substantially,” said Tucker (Martin Enserink, Science, March 15).

What the Scientists Are Trying to Do

Scientists conducted little research on the smallpox samples until a former Soviet scientist defected to the United States and revealed that the Soviet Union had conducted a huge program to weaponize smallpox, Science reported (see GSN, Jan. 22).  In response, the United States, with WHO oversight, began a program in 1999 to modernize smallpox research using medical developments such as molecular biology advances.

The CDC and USAMRIID have developed new diagnostic tests, examined genetic diversity of virus strains, sequenced the genomes of eight new isolates and developed a possible animal model for smallpox — an important step to developing drugs for humans (see GSN, Jan. 29).  Scientists are also working to develop safer vaccines.

U.S. and Russian researchers have been working together to study whether other types of poxes are filling the void left with the eradication of smallpox.

Vector researchers plan to test antiviral compounds and compare their smallpox strains with CDC strains (Enserink/Stone, Science).

Vector also wants to conduct a second expedition to the Arctic Circle to look for frozen, buried bodies of smallpox victims, Science reported.  Some Russian scientists have expressed concern that the virus could be viable in the tissues of corpses there and therefore potentially available to terrorists.

“It’s still quite possible that live smallpox exists in the permafrost,” said Vector’s Evgeny Belanov.

A terrorist “would only need to find a little bit of live virus to be successful,” said Alcami of Cambridge.  “I’m not sure if you would be able to recover infectious particles,” he said.  “But it’s not impossible.”

A Russian team went to Pokhodsk village in the Arctic Circle in 1991 and studied the bodies of smallpox victims from the 19^th century whose bodies had been frozen and thawed several times since their death.  In that case, they were unable to isolate a live virus from the bodies, according to Science (Richard Stone, Science, March 15).

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