42 top U.S. scientists and specialists explore cutting-edge innovations to defend America from dangerous zoonotic diseases

Among those innovations:

• A “Doc in a Box” on every American kitchen table that detects highly contagious and dangerous zoonotic diseases in people before symptoms appear.
• Computer-generated “lab animals” that increase the speed and decrease the cost of developing vaccines to protect humans from dangerous zoonotic diseases.
• Software that rapidly analyzes complex data, then displays the results as easily understood graphs, thus freeing researchers to spend more time and resources on developing products to mitigate outbreaks of dangerous zoonotic diseases.

The Forum on Science and Biothreats, held in early November at the Lansdowne Resort in northern Virginia, was sponsored by the National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense (the FAZD Center), a Department of Homeland Security National Center of Excellence.

Download the forum agenda

Download biographical briefs on participants

Zoonotic diseases attack both humans and animals. The most dangerous of these diseases pose catastrophic risks to U.S. public health and to the nation’s $1 trillion agricultural economy. At least 60 percent of all human pathogens are zoonotic, according to the U.S. government; 75 percent of recently emerging diseases that infect humans started as animal diseases.

A series of speakers presented novel discoveries and techniques from a range of scientific and technological disciplines, including epidemiology, pathology, microbiology, wildlife ecology, mathematics and computer modeling. Specialists in zoonotic disease then responded with “outside the box” discussions on how these discoveries and techniques may apply to detecting, mitigating and recovering from zoonotic outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics.

“Discoveries and technologies emerging in any of these disciplines may offer potential breakthroughs for detection, mitigation or recovery from zoonotic outbreaks,” said Neville P. Clarke, director of the FAZD Center. “Our goal was to keep the forum small enough to encourage dynamic interactions between the speakers, panelists and participants. Such interactions often result in the long-term, professional relationships that are essential to developing a national defense against dangerous zoonotic diseases.”

Participants included leading scientists and scholars from major U.S. universities and national laboratories, state and federal officials, and private sector specialists. Among the institutions represented were:

Major U.S. universities

• Georgetown University Medical Center.
• Harvard Medical School.
• Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
• Columbia University.
• Purdue University.
• Rutgers University.
• Texas A&M University.
• University of Minnesota.
• Animal Disease Research & Diagnostic Laboratory, South Dakota State University.
• Center for Innovations in Medicine, Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.

National laboratories

• Idaho National Laboratory.
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
• Los Alamos National Laboratory.
• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
• Sandia National Laboratories.

Federal/state government

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• Department of Homeland Security.
• National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center.
• National Center for Food Protection and Defense.
• National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne and Enteric Diseases.
• National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
• Office of Medical Services, U.S. Department of State.
• U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command .
• U.S. Army Veterinary Corps .
• U. S. Department of Agriculture/Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
• Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.

Private sector

• Battelle Memorial Institute.
• Pfizer.
• David Strategic Innovations Inc.
• Seralogix.
• viaFuture.
• Ingenuity Systems.