Ricin Vaccine Shown Safe in Humans

By Chris Schneidmiller
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The first tests of the experimental ricin vaccine on humans indicate that it would safely provide protection if the poison was used in an act of bioterrorism, researchers said this week (see GSN, Dec. 1, 2004).

Scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas tested the RiVax vaccine on three groups of volunteers, each consisting of five participants, according to an article published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

All volunteers received three doses over three months. The five volunteers who received the highest dose of 100 micrograms produced blood-borne antibodies that would neutralize the toxin. Scientists also found antibodies in four volunteers who received the medium dose of 33 micrograms and in one participant who received the low dosage of 10 micrograms.

Antibodies from the volunteers were tested in mice injected with live ricin. The mice lived, and researchers believe the vaccine would similarly safeguard humans against a lethal dose of ricin.

The volunteers themselves suffered minimal side effects from the vaccine, including mild headaches and soreness at the site of injection. Such problems are expected with most intramuscular shots, researchers said in a university press release.

“The vaccine that we’re developing … is safe in humans, at least at the doses we tested, and is able to produce an immune response,” lead research article author Ellen Vitetta, director of the Cancer Immunobiology Center at UT Southwestern, said in an interview.

There is no approved vaccine for ricin, a poison that can be extracted from the waste left by processing castor beans into castor oil. A 500-microgram dose of ricin could kill an adult, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and death is assured for those who do not receive treatment within a few hours of exposure.

The toxin is a known terror and espionage agent. Ricin-laced mail was sent two years ago to the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) (see GSN, Feb. 3, 2005). Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov died in 1978 after being jabbed with an umbrella that inserted a ricin pellet into his leg.

Miami pharmaceutical firm DOR BioPharma plans to produce RiVax if it is licensed by the Food and Drug Administration. The company announced last week that it had completed development of the manufacturing process for an important protein to be used in the vaccine.

Work on the vaccine at UT Southwestern began in 1999. Vitetta said it could take another two years before the treatment is ready for consideration by the Food and Drug Administration. 

“It’s hard to know. It depends on the progress of the work and the funds available,” she said. “A lot more work remains to be done.”

A National Institutes of Health grant will provide funding through February 2007. Vitetta said she is waiting to hear whether the agency plans to offer additional money.

Researchers are now developing a vaccine adjuvant — material that would be combined with the inoculation to boost its strength and longevity.

Participants in the clinical trial had antibodies in their blood for up to 127 days following the final dose, researchers found. They hope to produce a vaccine that provides protection for a year or longer, Vitetta said.

Also being studied is whether the vaccine safeguards mice against aerosolized ricin or poison taken orally. A ricin attack would be more likely to come in those forms than through a needle, Vitetta said.

The vaccine is presently being considered only as a prophylactic to be administered in advance of potential exposure to ricin, said DOR BioPharma president and CEO Michael Sember. The company is planning additional clinical trials, but Sember said he could not discuss details of those efforts.

No federal agency has issued a request for bids for production of a ricin vaccine, Sember said. The Centers for Disease Control designates ricin as a Category B biothreat, meaning it is moderately easy to disseminate and would be expected to result in low mortality rates. 

The United States has focused resources against biological terrorism on countering Category A diseases such as plague and smallpox, which can be easily transmitted from person to person and could cause a large number of deaths.

Sember said, though, that history has proven the need for a ricin vaccine.

“We can’t quantify the size of the market,” he said. “What we can say, is that it’s well known that ricin is a toxin that can be used and has been used around the world for some time.”

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U.S. Army Grenade Patent Changed

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last month changed controversial language in a patent that critics said suggested the Army has developed an aerosol dispersion grenade in violation of international arms control treaties and U.S. law (see GSN, Jan. 5, 2005).

Language in the Army’s patent, No. 6,523,478, which was awarded in February 2003, repeatedly said the “rifle-launched nonlethal cargo dispenser” could be used to disperse aerosolized agents including “chemical agents” and “biological agents.”

That and similar descriptions of its capabilities in the patent, critics said, suggested the grenade was developed in violation of the Chemical and Biological weapons conventions and the U.S. Biological Weapons Antiterrorism Act of 1989. The latter two prohibit development of devices to deliver biological weapons agents, while the Chemical Weapons Convention forbids using riot control agents as a method of warfare (see GSN, Nov. 11, 2005).

The Sunshine Project advocacy organization has argued the grenade should not be further developed and used. The weapon would be “practically useless in CWC compliant applications,” said Sunshine Project co-director Edward Hammond. “This is not a riot control weapon.”

An Army spokesman in 2003 said the language was in error and a correction would be sought through the Patent and Trademark Office (see GSN, May 28, 2003). 

The Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command’s “certificate of correction” said “the term ‘chemical/biological agents’ was incorrectly used (on only four occasions) and it is requested that the term be deleted from the patent because it is unnecessary and confusing.” It added, “This mistake was made in good faith, and deletion of the term does not introduce new matter into the specification nor require re-examination.”

The Patent and Trade Office originally denied the request in February 2005, finding the proposed change would alter the scope of the patent.

However, the agency reconsidered and approved the changes on Dec. 22, according to a page on the office Web site. The version of the document posted online has not yet been changed.

“It’s a good thing that they went ahead and changed the claims,” said Hammond. He added, though, “It doesn’t obviate the fact that they made the claim in the first place and presumably the weapon is capable of doing what they claimed.”

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Railroad Company Plans D.C. Security Improvements, Seeks Quick Resolution of Court Case

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Railroad company CSX will soon begin new security-related construction on the District of Columbia’s rails, CSX Vice President for Public Safety and Environment Skip Elliott said yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 15, 2005).

The company is hoping for a speedy resolution to its court case challenging the city’s ban on shipments of certain toxic-materials, Elliott said at a rail-security conference hosted here by Railway Age magazine.

“We hope that that decision will be made rather soon,” Elliott said. “Unfortunately, we hear some talk in the hallways indicating that that litigation may still be in progress a year from now.”

Despite the “unresolved rerouting question,” Elliott said, the company is taking steps to improve security, including greater railway-police presence on the rails, counterterrorism training for personnel, stronger tank-car materials, and computer systems for tracking the locations of hazardous-materials shipments.

Construction is to begin in June in Washington on new security infrastructure, including WMD detection equipment.

City officials have said tank cars full of materials such as chlorine would amount to rolling chemical weapons if targeted by terrorists — a possibility officials and activists say al-Qaeda members have contemplated.

The city’s ban, which seeks to force CSX to reroute the shipments away from Washington, is on hold while CSX and the federal government challenge it in court. CSX has said it is in the meantime refraining from bringing at least some of the shipments through the city.

Like Elliott, Federal Railroad Administration acting Administrator for Safety Jo Strang yesterday used her presentation at the conference to highlight new security measures planned or in progress on the nation’s railways. Strang mentioned research on biometric identification checks for rail personnel, new protective coatings to help protect tank cars against accidents or attacks, and new risk analyses of various kinds of shipments.

The Transportation and Homeland Security departments, Strang said, are also “working through” new regulations on routing of trains that would “clarify and enhance” the existing rules.

As quoted in this month’s Railway Age, Elliott did not appear to rule out the possibility for rerouting to be part of a long-term solution to the conflict.

The D.C. case, he told the magazine, “will ultimately drive change in shipments of high-hazmat products involving rerouting or additional tracking capability or technology.”

“I don’t know the answer,” he said. “We need clarification from the court as to who is responsible for rerouting from the legal aspect and what dialogue needs to take place among carriers, chemical manufacturers, shippers and the government to ensure it’s transported in a safe manner.”

Delays continue to slow the court challenge. Under a Dec. 14 order by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, today was to have been the deadline for Homeland Security and Transportation to submit to city lawyers a set of documents that city officials say should include the government’s secret rail-security plan for the District. The deadline has been extended to Feb. 17, D.C. Attorney General’s Office spokeswoman Traci Hughes said yesterday.

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WMD Potential Threatens World Safety, Lugar Says

The potential for terrorists to obtain weapons of mass destruction endangers not only world security, but also efforts to boost countries’ stability and economies, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said last week (see GSN, Jan. 11).

Unconventional weapons enable “a small nation, or even a subnational group to kill as many innocent people in a day as national armies killed in months of fighting during World War II,” Lugar said during a Jan. 26 speech to Defense Threat Reduction Agency personnel.

The death and fear caused by a WMD strike would undermine work to heighten people’s standard of living around the world, Lugar said.

“Even if we succeed spectacularly at building democracy around the world, bringing stability to failed states, and spreading economic opportunity broadly, we will not be secure from the actions of small disaffected groups that acquire weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program has led to a significant reduction in Russian nuclear weapons — including destruction of 611 ballistic missiles and 563 submarine-launched ballistic missiles — and is supporting construction of a chemical weapons disposal facility at Shchuchye, Lugar said. The program has aided Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan in eliminating their nuclear stockpiles.

The program has also expanded to address problems outside of former Soviet states, for example by providing $50 million for Albania to destroy its chemical weapons, Lugar said (see GSN, July 22, 2005).

“We must create new nonproliferation partners and aggressively pursue any nonproliferation opportunities that appear,” he said. “This is an instrument begging to be used anywhere that we can achieve diplomatic breakthroughs” (U.S. State Department release, Jan. 30).

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Sensors to Detect Chem, Bio Weapons in Chicago

Chicago is finalizing a contract for a security grid that would include sensors to detect chemical and biological weapons, the Chicago Sun-Times reported today (see GSN, Jan. 3).

The sensors are part of “Operation Virtual Shield,” a plan to link some 2,250 cameras and equip them with software capable of spotting “suspicious and unusual behavior,” according to the Sun-Times (Fran Spielman, Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 31).

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China, Russia Back Sending Iranian Nuclear Crisis to U.N.

China and Russia have agreed to sign on to a Western-led effort to report Iran’s nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Jan. 30).

After a four-hour dinner meeting last night in London, foreign ministers from the permanent Security Council nations and Germany issued a joint statement calling on the International Atomic Energy Agency governing board at its emergency meeting Thursday to report Iran’s activities to the Security Council. 

However, the ministers also agreed that the council should wait until March, when the agency is expected to release a formal report on Iran’s nuclear activities, to take any action.

The agency would “report on the situation in Iran and the way the Iranian authorities are not cooperating with the international agency,” said a French official.

He said Russian and Chinese officials had been reluctant to agree on moving the matter to the council, but were persuaded to show a united front with the three other permanent Security Council members — France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“It was very important to make sure they are all together on this issue and all agree on the same position,” the official said.

Tehran said referral would undercut opportunities for a negotiated settlement.

“Referring or reporting Iran’s dossier to the U.N. Security Council will be unconstructive and the end of diplomacy,” said chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani (Anne Gearan, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, Jan. 31).

Russia had initially proposed having the issue sent to the Security Council in a less formal manner that would inhibit action, the New York Times reported today.

The “clear implication” of the statement signed by the Chinese and Russian foreign ministers, however, was that their nations would vote in favor of referral, a U.S. official told the Times (Steven Weisman, New York Times, Jan. 31).

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency said there was no legal justification for Security Council referral, the Associated Press reported today.

“The biggest problem for the West is that they can’t find any (legal) justification to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council,” said Gholamreza Aghazadeh (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press II/Bergensavisen, Jan. 31).

U.S. President George W. Bush said he would use his annual State of the Union speech tonight to criticize Iranian leaders, Agence France-Presse reported.

“The message is: Give up your nuclear weapons ambitions,” Bush said yesterday.

“We’re united in our goal to keep the Iranians from having a weapon, and we’re working on the tactics necessary to continue putting a united front out,” he said, referring to the world powers meeting in London (Agence France-Presse I/Turkish Weekly, Jan. 31).

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that “robust” negotiations with Iran remain necessary, AP reported.

“We believe that there is a lot of life left in the diplomacy,” she said. “After all, going to the Security Council is not the end of diplomacy. It’s just diplomacy in a different, more robust context” (David Stringer, Associated Press III/Yahoo!News, Jan. 31).

Cuba, Malaysia and South Africa have announced their support for Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy technology, AFP reported yesterday.

Following a meeting Friday in Pretoria between the three Nonaligned Movement countries and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, the nations released a statement “reaffirming the basic and inalienable right ... to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, without any discrimination and in conformity with the” Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (Agence France-Presse II/IranMania.com, Jan. 30).

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U.S. Develops Technology to Monitor Nuclear Activity

The United States has accelerated efforts to develop new nuclear espionage technologies, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Jan. 30).

The research focuses on improved detection of four basic signatures emitted by nuclear facilities: distinctive chemicals, sounds, electromagnetic waves and isotopes. 

The CIA nearly two years ago conducted a secret meeting of hundreds of nuclear intelligence experts to address the issue, the Times reported. The experts discussed new ways to monitor electric power lines for the signature of high-speed centrifuges and lasers that can track radioactive particles, among other developing technologies.

Improved remote monitoring could be important if Iran limits international nuclear inspections, U.S. officials have said.

“There is an urgency and imperative to invest in the technology to determine which approaches are best,” said Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph. “Some will work.  Some will not. But it is the geopolitics that makes this urgent.”

Experts agreed, however, that the new technologies could not replace the human inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

One participant in the CIA meeting called the effort an overreaction to recent intelligence failures.

“We’re throwing money at it,” he said. “We’ve created a whole business of people looking for needles in haystacks.”

The program places emphasis on sensors, the Times reported. For example, atmospheric increases in radioactivity and the presence of uranium 235 — produced when natural uranium is enriched — are clear indicators of such activity. Research on sensors that could detect those elements is under way at the Los Alamos, Livermore and Oak Ridge national laboratories, experts said.

Another goal is to create devices to track chemical byproduct leaks from clandestine sites.

“That’s the smoking gun,” said one nuclear expert (Sanger/Broad, New York Times, Jan. 31).

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North Korea Says Still Committed to Nuclear Talks

North Korea said today it has not given up on diplomacy as the forum for resolving the standoff over its nuclear program, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Jan. 30).

Pyongyang “is sticking to its stand to seek ways of overcoming difficulties lying in the way of the six-party talks and of achieving progress in the talks,” the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary.

Pyongyang, though, alleged that the United States conducted more than 190 spy flights over North Korea this month and is preparing an attack.

“Now that the moves of the forces hostile to (North Korea) have reached their extreme phase, the (North) is left with no other option but to bolster its nuclear deterrent for self-defense,” a Jurists Committee official said (Kwang-Tae Kim, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 31).

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Indian Parties Demand U.S. Envoy Ouster

Left-wing political parties in India have asked New Delhi to demand the recall of U.S. Ambassador David Mulford, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 30).

Mulford last week said India could jeopardize a pending nuclear technology sharing agreement with the United States if did not vote against Iran at Thursday’s emergency International Atomic Energy Agency meeting (see related GSN story, today).

“The government should demand his recall from India as it is unbecoming on any ambassador’s part to comment on such matters,” Communist Party of India (Marxist) member Sitaram Yechury said yesterday (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Jan. 30).

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee said New Delhi is still evaluating its position on Iran ahead of Thursday’s meeting, AFP reported today.

“We are reviewing the situation and we will articulate our stand at the appropriate time,” he said.

Indian officials told The Hindu newspaper that India would vote to refer Iran’s nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council, while other reports said India planned to abstain, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Jan. 31).

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Russian Missile Battalion to get Topol-M This Year

A battalion in the Russian Strategic Missile Forces is expected to be equipped with Topol-M mobile missile systems this year, Interfax reported today (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2005).

“Retraining of the crews will start in February,” said Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Belousov.

The Topol-M ICBM is expected to be able to defeat missile defenses like the system being prepared in the United States (Interfax, Jan. 31).

The Russian R-36M Voyevoda heavy ICBMs — known in the West as the Satan — are expected to remain in service until 2016, Interfax reported.

“The SMF inventory contains 80 Voyevoda ICBMs at the moment,” Col. Gen Nikolai Solovtsov, Strategic Missile Forces commander, told the Krasnaya Zvezda daily. “The missiles will be removed from combat duty as soon as their service lives expire. The process will last until 2016” (Interfax, Jan. 31).

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Pentagon Dedicates Money for Construction Projects

The U.S. Defense Department plans to use $44 million in fiscal 2006 to begin construction of chemical weapons disposal facilities in Colorado and Kentucky, the Chemical Weapons Working Group announced Friday (see GSN, Dec. 23, 2005).

Congress late last year allocated $51 million in this fiscal year for the projects at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado and the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky.

Defense Undersecretary Kenneth Krieg indicated in a memo last week that the Pentagon is prepared to use most of that money.

The contractor at Blue Grass is now accepting bids for preparatory work for the disposal facility (see GSN, Jan. 20).

“This memo should allow the contract to start ‘moving dirt’ [to] be awarded, and we hope to see such activities beginning this spring,” said Craig Williams, Chemical Weapons Working Group director, in a press release.

The memo also indicates that the Defense Department plans to seek additional construction money for fiscal 2007, according to the release (Chemical Weapons Working Group release, Jan. 27).

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Russia to Activate Early Warning Radar Next Year

Russia plans to activate its new missile early warning radar early next year, ITAR-Tass reported today (see GSN, Jan. 19).

A test run of the radar installation at Lekhtusi is expected to begin in late 2006, Russian Space Troops commander Col. Gen. Vladimir Popovkin told Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov yesterday.

The new radar’s range is approximately 6,000 kilometers, similar to older systems. However, the new system will be manned by 15 specialists — less than half the manpower required by existing installations, according to ITAR-Tass (Alexander Konovalov, ITAR-Tass, Jan. 31).

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U.S. Delivers Geiger Counters, Training to Nations

A team of U.S. radiation specialists is delivering equipment and training to officials in numerous countries to help them detect radiation sources that could be used in weapons, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 4, 2004).

Personnel from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York have delivered more than 300 Geiger counters to 11 nations since early 2004.

Roughly 250 police officers in those countries — Croatia, Uganda, Romania, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tanzania, Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria — have also received training on using the equipment.

The potential for loose radioactive material to be used in a radiological “dirty bomb” is “definitely one of the driving concerns here,” said team leader Rich Meehan, a foreign affairs specialist at Oak Ridge. “But there is also just the simple concern of people that are mishandling radioactive material.”

The program grew out of a project to deliver Energy Department equipment to state homeland security agencies in the United States. The Congressional Research Service in 2003 recommended that the program be made international.

“Supporting foreign efforts to respond to terrorist threats, such as by securing radioactive materials, could reduce the risk of a terrorist attack on the United States and its allies,” the agency said (Duncan Mansfield, Associated Press, Jan. 30).

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